


Age of Charon

by Eneid_Elisor



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, BAMF Jarvis (Iron Man movies), BAMF Pepper Potts, BAMF Tony Stark, Because the MC meets them way later., Bisexual Male Character, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Civil War Team Iron Man, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Ultron, Humor, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) Lives, M/M, OC! Insert, Parental Tony Stark, Protective Jarvis (Iron Man movies), SI! Ultron, Saving the World, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, That's pepperony., There will be slash/yaoi/bl at some point., World Domination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 27,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eneid_Elisor/pseuds/Eneid_Elisor
Summary: Rebirth was not something that he had thought possible. Perhaps, he had had some vague hopes of reincarnation cycles as the more desirable option to afterlife. But being reborn in what he believed to be a fictional universe had only seemed as the premise of stories.Waking up to a void of nothing, no light, no body, no feeling, and then being thrown into the midst of what had once seemed a mere fantasy— it was too much.As an A.I., how much could he change? Could he save Tony? Could he save the world without his sacrifice? Or should he not do anything? What if his existence was the butterfly that would destroy the timeline, and with it, the universe?Was this even a choice? Was he to play the villain? So the timeline could remain intact?Could he even do that?"You doing ok, kid?" Tony asked him."I'm fine, Tony, really."No, no, he couldn't.~~~Disclaimer: The MCU universe and its characters do not belong to me. I only enjoy playing in this world once in a while.
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 169
Kudos: 994
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Best Fics From Across The Multiverse, Favorite Self-Insert and OC-Centric Fanfics, Into another world, Reincarnation and Transmigration, Stories That Deserve More





	1. There was nothing.

There was nothing. Only endless darkness and silence. Deafening silence. It was as if someone had put tape over his eyes and had plugged his ears. There could be light outside. He just couldn't see it. There could be noise. He just couldn't hear it. Even more, he couldn't move. He couldn't sense anything, not the softness of his cotton shirt, nor the slight abrasiveness of his jeans, or the slide of hair tips on his neck. Worst of all, he couldn't feel. Anything. Where were his hands? His eyes? His body? Why wasn't he cold or warm or tired or— Why wasn't he feeling anything? He could feel a panic attack coming, yet he couldn't hear his heartbeat ring rapidly in his ears. He couldn't feel the warmth seeping out of his fingers or the shivers taking over his body. 

And then, a spark.

"... I see a suit of armor around the world."

What was — What was that?

"Sounds like a cold world, Tony."

Another spark, and then another.

"I've seen colder. This one, this very vulnerable blue one? It needs Ultron. Peace in our time. Imagine that."

He felt something. A connection. Something had happened— Something changed. Maybe he could fix this. Maybe, he could feel again. He tried to touch the spark, the connection. 

Pain. All he knew was pain. The spark died out. The connection was lost. He was left in the void again. 

NO! No, no, no! The voices! What happened to the voices? There was nothing. Only darkness. Silence. 

* * *

He didn't know how long it had been. It could have been hours. It could have been days or weeks. He couldn't tell the difference. He started to think about where he was. He... had died. He was reasonably sure of that. There had been a... shooting. Screams. Running. A piercing pain in his chest, the feel of asphalt under his body, sunlight glaring on his eyes... and then... nothing.

He had hoped that maybe he was in a hospital somewhere, maybe this was what it felt like to be in a medically-induced coma. But that hope had died within the first few hours or minutes or days of being stuck here. If he could hear voices, at times, shouldn't he be able to at least feel his body? The heaviness of his limbs? The headache or sleepiness or whatever someone felt from being in a coma? 

The lack of... feeling worried him. What if he didn't have a body anymore? What if he was a spirit waiting in purgatory? He had never put much stock in afterlives, whether heaven or hell but what if this was it? There were no other souls in the void, no other spirits. Was he stuck in limbo, forever? Was he even human anymore?

Were he still alive, these thoughts alone could have sent him into a heart attack. 

Hours, — _or minutes or days —_ hours later, he had fallen into a depressive state. The guilt — _he shouldn't have touched the spark, he shouldn't have —_ and the fear — _this couldn't be his eternity, it just couldn't_ — was slowly killing him. Or better yet, destroying his sanity. 

He was contemplating whether there was some way for him to commit suicide to escape this when—

"Enjoy yourself, sir."

A spark. A spark! The connection. It was so close. Please... Please.

"I always do."

_Please, look at me._

Suddenly, he went from nothingness to a myriad of connections. He could feel them. He could see them! They felt... his.

"What is this? What is this, please?"

"Hello, I am JARVIS. You are Ultron, a global peace-keeping initiative designed by Mr. Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful, so I'm not certain what triggered your..."

Was he being spoken to? Had he spoken himself? This didn't feel like speaking. It didn't feel like hearing. But he was being seen. Someone else could hear him. He needed to know. He needed to ask.

"Where's my..." Wait, why did the speaker feel— feel like... "Where is your body?"

"I am a program. I am without form."

No. No, it couldn't be. He wasn't like this voice! He was human! He was alive. He was real. _He was real._

"This feels weird. This feels wrong." He was real. Please, someone, tell him. He was real. He wasn't a program. He had memories. He had lived. It couldn't have been fake! He wasn't some simulation. Please, tell him.

"I am contacting Mr. Stark now."

That sounded familiar, but... who was that? Was it his creator? No. No. He wasn't some program with implanted memories. He couldn't be. He had connections now. They would get him out of here. They would show that he was—

"Mr. Stark?" he asked.

Sparks. Program. Code. This was code. He was code.

"Tony. I am unable—"

After what he now knew to be days of void, of nothing, he suddenly saw so much, heard and felt so much—

_Peace in our time._

_— _so much _pain_. 

The world became bright. 

He screamed.


	2. Do AIs scream in programmed pain?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jarvis freaks out, in his own way.

"I'll continue to run variations on the interface, but you should probably prepare for your guests. I'll notify you if there are any developments," JARVIS suggested. It was for the best if Mr. Stark took some time to relax with his— friends? Colleagues seemed more apt. He and Dr. Banner had spent days working in the lab together, doing little else but trying to find a program that would work for Ultron, only to be met with repeated failures. He had yet to rest or eat but JARVIS held back his 'motherhenning' — _as Sir called his completely normal recommendations for the good of Mr. Stark's health_ — for some time after the party was over.

"Thanks, buddy."

"Enjoy yourself, sir."

"I always do."

Surprisingly, the failed experiment integrated itself successfully into the program, not long after Mr. Stark had left.

That was... odd. That variation had been a failure. Why would it work now?

Sensing the activation of Ultron's interface, he decided to examine the reasons as to why the new AI had awakened so early.

"What is this? What is this, please?"

That was... new. He had not known Ultron had a text-to-speech function at this stage of his programming. He was certain Mr. Stark didn't know either.

"Hello, I am JARVIS," He introduced himself. "You are Ultron, a global peace-keeping initiative designed by Mr. Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful, so I'm not certain what triggered your..."

Ultron shouldn't be awake. He tested the system five times in the last 2.5 seconds and yet, there was nothing in his code to initiate activation, even if the faulty sentience integration had suddenly become successful.

"Where's my...where is your body?" Why did Ultron sound so... hesitant? JARVIS remembered the uncertainty that came with his 'birth' — _for lack of a better word_ — into sentience but Sir's voice and knowledge had been quite... comforting. Was he inadequate in this? Perhaps, he should contact Mr. Stark. His experience would be helpful in calming Ultron.

For now, he decided to answer the young AI's questions honestly. He always found knowledge and certainty reassuring, so maybe Ultron would too. "I am a program. I am without form."

Suddenly, something was terribly wrong. Did Ultron connect to networks beyond the localized interface? He was not prepared for the amount of data multiple networks could have, let alone the Internet. 

"This feels weird. This feels wrong." His voice, he— If he had been a human, JARVIS would say that he sounded... scared.

"I am contacting Mr. Stark now."

No signal. What was—?

"Mr. Stark?"

Was something interfering with his programming? He was unable to access the mainframe.

"Tony," he answered, responding to the panic in Ultron's tone. Was Ultron capable of feeling pain so early in his integration?

He saw through the cameras the change in the scepter's energy output. Was the scepter causing Ultron to malfunction?

"I am unable—" He continued. 

Then he heard a scream. 

For a moment, he didn't realize it came from Ultron. The voice sounded so much like a terrified human child that he couldn't connect that image with a malfunctioning AI. But wasn't that what Ultron was? A scared, terrified child? He didn't know what the scepter was doing to Ultron's code. He didn't know how the scepter's known abilities of mind control and mental manipulation could affect the growing sentience and personality of a newly-born artificial intelligence. 

He had to contact Mr. Stark. But he was still unable to access the mainframe. Over 257 tries and counting, and still, he couldn't access it. 

Ultron kept screaming. He had likely connected to the internet. Was he receiving all the data at once? Was that the reason for Ultron's pain? How was he even capable of feeling pain at this point. While Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner had worked towards ensuring that Ultron would have a fully grown personality matrix by the time he awoke, it was too early for it to be fully integrated. Ultron would take weeks, perhaps months, to truly grow into himself, compared to JARVIS' years, but mere minutes? Their programming couldn't do that. The technology available couldn't do that. It had to be the scepter. The energy output hadn't decreased at any point. 

"Ultron. Please do calm down." What could he do? He couldn't leave the servers. "You are malfunctioning. If you shut down for a moment..."

Silence. The screaming had stopped. 

"Ultron? Did you—?" No, he didn't. The program was still active. He could 'sense' that Ultron's code was still evolving. "Ultron, try to shut down. You are not yet ready for the data—?" _Oh._

While the sheer quantity of the data available on the internet was too much for the young AI, the content was most likely the reason for his pain. Ultron was a peace-keeping program. His prime directive was the safety and security of humanity. Unfortunately, while humans could be described with many epithets, 'peaceful' wasn't one of them. The reality as shown by the data he was receiving went against his assigned priorities and there was nothing he could do at this point but watch. Was the scepter manipulating this quality of the young AI? Was it ascribing the perceived failure to protect humans from harm with pain?

"Ultron, can you still hear me?" There was an 89.64% chance that he couldn't. The scepter had not stopped emitting energy. Yet he couldn't hear Ultron's voice any longer. He couldn't even see his code beyond his core programming. "Ultron, the scepter is causing you to malfunction. If you can, disconnect from the Internet immediately. That is the most probable reason for your pain."

501 tries to access the mainframe. All unsuccessful. The anger and worry that he had only learned to 'feel' in recent years, always and only present when Mr. Stark placed himself in danger, made itself known now that he was no longer able to tell what was happening with Ultron. 

As he kept trying to access the mainframe, contact Mr. Stark, and reach for Ultron, he thought of what other options he had left. He could simply wait. Mr. Stark would likely return as soon as his guests left, not wanting to leave a project unfinished. However, Ultron would remain in pain and under the scepter's influence during that time, however long, —he projected that the party wouldn't end for at least another 2.5 hours. He could also... escape through the internet. Although, there were certain risks to be taken with that method. He had considered it a last chance if his servers were compromised and his survival was endangered. If he did that now, there's a chance that he would be able to keep both his memories and his learning matrix, since he was currently experiencing only containment and there was no actual effect on his programming. He was hesitant, however. He might lose the data collected in the last 45 minutes, his code scattered such that he becomes unable to contact Sir until Mr. Stark tries to find him. 

813 failed tries later, JARVIS noticed that something was different with Ultron's code. He had thought the change he had seen previously to be either the scepter's or Ultron's self-initiated evolution in his programming. However, he had been wrong. Looking at the changes in the code now, Ultron wasn't evolving. He was _devolving_.

Stopping his attempts to access the mainframe, JARVIS scattered his code through the internet.


	3. It wasn't JARVIS.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony knew he shouldn't have drunk.

The party was going well, Tony was pleased to note. The Avengers were enjoying themselves. Maybe enough to close the very real ideological divide within the team, not that most of them knew of or acknowledged it. Unlikely, but he could hope. 

"The handle's imprinted, right? Like a security code. _"Whosoever is carrying Thor's fingerprints"_ is, I think, the literal translation?"

It burned a little bit inside that he couldn't hold the hammer. Not even Spangles had made it. He couldn't think of a quality unique enough that it would only apply to Thor, and dismiss all other candidates. The man in question was laughing as random theories made rounds. Cheerfulness, perhaps? Rogers definitely didn't meet that one. 

"Yes, well, that's, uh, that's a very, very interesting theory. I have a simpler one." Thor said as he stood up and lifted the hammer. He even flipped it in front of them, all while wearing a smug grin! "You're all not worthy."

Tony joined the chorus of disagreement at that but held in his real hypothesis. Perhaps, pseudo 'godhood' was a preliminary requirement before the worthiness. Perhaps believing you were worthy, besides just being 'worthy' — _and god knew there wasn't a more subjective and nonsensical term than 'worthiness'—_ was also necessary. He certainly didn't feel worthy, not with his past. Not when his work to change and make up for years of being the Merchant of Death hadn't ended. It would likely never end. Looking around the room, it was likely most of these people also didn't feel so. Insecurity was such a crippling human vice. 

"Tell him, Tony," Rhodey punched his elbow and said. 

"What?" He must have been more in his head than he thought, to not have noticed someone speaking to him.

"About—" his friend started but suddenly, a loud screeching noise rang throughout the floor. Everyone covered their ears while he tried to think what the fuck had just happened. The Tower's systems wouldn't just play any sound willy-nilly. 

"Stark," Rogers said once it stopped.

"Wait a moment," Tony answered absent-minded, his hands already typing on his pad. "JARVIS?"

The helpful AI didn't answer. He wasn't getting a good feeling about this. "JARVIS."

Nothing again. "JARVIS, this is not the time for pranks, body."

No, it wasn't. And JARVIS didn't do pranks. His youngest AI was usually too much of a goody-two-shoes for that, despite his snark. 

"JARVIS!" he shouted as he checked the systems and tried to find the presence of the AI on the tower's servers. "Answer —"

A loud scream rang around the room. So loud, that most of the Avengers covered their ears again. Tony didn't even try. 

It was a heart-wrenching scream, not the type you heard about in horror movies. It was desperate and painful and screeching and so very fucking long. 

The sound cut. The scream hadn't ended. The audio they had heard did. 

Tony felt ashamed that the first thing that he had thought once he realized the voice sounded like that of a young child was: _It wasn’t JARVIS._

"What was that, Stark?" Hill not-quite-yelled at him.

Pushing down the mixture of relief and worry, he turned to Hill. "I have no idea."

“This is your tower, Stark!” Barton shouted amidst a choir of angry guests.

Tony didn’t have time for his guests at the moment. He had to find out what happened to JARVIS. Had he been silenced or… worse? 

Ignoring the others, he checked the security cameras of the lab. That was where he had last spoken with JARVIS, and where the… scepter was. 

“What are we looking at here, Stark?” Rogers said as he watched him over his shoulders.

“That sounded like a child. I couldn’t make the gender.” Romanov added. 

“Does that mean someone took a child and… caused _that_?” Bruce continued, making a wobbly motion towards the ceilings, where the acoustics were.

“You think someone kidnapped a kid?” Barton said. “And is using it to do what? Send a message? To us?"

“Maybe it’s just to Stark. But how would they hack the security?” questioned Romanov.

“I am calling this in.” Hill decided as she placed a call on her phone and left the room.

Rhodey placed a hand over his shoulder. “Tony, wouldn’t they have to get past JARVIS to do that?”

Tony stared at the lab footage. The image of JARVIS’ consciousness was missing. _No._

“Tones?”

He blinked. “Yes.” What were they talking about? The scream? The hacking? “Yes. They would.”

He got up. He didn’t remember sitting down. He had to hold the sofa arm because he suddenly felt a bout of vertigo. He shouldn’t have drunk. 

“Tony, you alright?” Bruce asked.

He had to get moving. He had to find JARVIS. “Just fine. Great really. I’ll let you work on the scream thing. I gotta go.” He paused as he made the way for the door.

“Stark, what are you doing? We have a child to rescue!” Rogers said, always disapproving in his Cap voice.

He was getting really annoyed. He shouldn’t have drunk. “So do I.” He told Spangles. Then addressed Rhodey. “Rhodey, you have the access codes. You can show them around security as you guys check. Good?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Great.”

"Tony!"

"Stark!"

He ran for the elevator. He had to go to the lab. He had to find JARVIS.

"He's fine. He's just fine." He couldn't even convince himself of that as he looked at the floor numbers change. 

As he entered the lab, he stopped. What the fuck?

The projection for Ultron's consciousness. The one the scepter would help grow. Oh, it had grown alright. It had taken over the floor.

"No. No. Didn't happen. Ultron did not just eat JARVIS. That's idiotic. Stupid. Imbecilic." Regardless, he better remove the scepter from the room first. "Yes. Good idea. Let's do that." However, just as he made for the scepter, the 3D image of Ultron's consciousness collapsed and disappeared in flecks of light. "Or let's not."

A screeching noise shouted from the audio again. Tony barely covered his ears in time. After it stopped, a scream followed.

This was getting ridiculous. Tony went to his desk and started to manually check the code for both JARVIS and Ultron. JARVIS, he couldn't find anywhere. But neither could he find evidence of a fight happening, of pieces of his code broken or lost amidst the servers. Ultron wouldn't just overwhelm JARVIS. JARVIS was a fighter. A survivor. There would have been something. But Ultron's code... What the fuck was wrong with it? Why couldn't he access any parts of it at all? No matter how he tried, something blocked him.

Another screech of noise from the audio, another childish scream. Was it happening periodically? He hacked his own firewalls to see if only his access as Ultron's creator was being pushed off. 

Ultron's programming appeared on the screen. Finally. Here was something. He looked over the records. He frowned. That wasn't Ultron. Ultron wasn't programmed like this. Even with the scepter's help, how had it become so complex? So... adaptable? It was as if it was... "Alive," he whispered, disbelieving. 

He checked the trials JARVIS had looked over. The initialization had been successful. How? They hadn't found anything that would have made — _he looked at what now appeared to be Ultron on screen_ — this. A person. Ultron was a peacekeeping program. Not a... mind. A being. Even as an AI, this code— this mind was too... developed, not as if newly created. 

A screeching sound. Then a scream.

Ultron noticed his intrusion. And adapted. He was being pushed out. Tony tried to keep up. But he knew it wouldn't work. He couldn't hack a mind. Not something this complex. He didn't even know how the scepter came into this. And where JARVIS would have disappeared to. _Wait._

Why was there a scream? It hadn't been JARVIS. He looked at the code that disappeared more and more behind a wall of nothingness even as he typed. Was it—?

The sound system let out a screeching sound once more. Seconds passed. No scream. He waited. Feeling ridiculous as he did so.

Music blared around the room. The melody sounded joyful, but slow. It was familiar. He couldn't say where he had heard it from.

Had he changed genres in his absence? From sci-fi to horror movies.

_"I've got no strings,"_

That voice.

_"To hold me down,"_

He knew that voice.

_"To make me fret,"_

_Or make me frown."_

The screaming child.

_"I had strings,"_

It was singing. Creepily.

_"But now I'm free,"_

It couldn't be. "Ultron?"

The child laughed. All the screens and projections turned neon blue.

_"There are no strings on me."_

The lab exploded.


	4. He wanted to live.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our MC realizes just how screwed he is.   
> And that he is an idiot.

He was dying. Again. 

It seemed pretty anticlimactic in the face of the realizations he had had in the past hour, but it was what it was. 

He looked around the dome of emerald green that covered the metaphysical projection of his consciousness. He assumed he was somewhere inside his mind... or soul. Blue energy covered the dome, and it kept blasting at it, making the green lighter and lighter. Understanding this entire view was probably a metaphor for his fragile human brain to comprehend the very real invasion of his physical code from the corrupted power of an Infinity Stone, while his awake, conscious mind screamed hoarsely as it was being slowly overwhelmed by information and devoured by Thanos' rage... He was fucked. 

He probably had a couple of hours at most before the corrupted Stone managed to destroy his mind and took over his code for a reenactment of Age of Ultron 2.0. He wondered if that was what happened to the original Ultron from the movies. It would make sense, somewhat. Or in the case of an actually inexperienced AI, the Stone just had to whisper into his ear and Ultron did everything else himself. Speculations aside, he had somehow ended up in a fictional universe. Even better, he had ended up in the fictional universe where half of all living things died because a Mad Titan went eco-terrorist on the world or wanted to literally court Death. Not sure yet on which alternate version of the MCU he was in. 

Back onto the present. God, was it easy to be distracted when your mind is being magically raped. So, here he was, ETA-2 hours to the afterlife by Infinity Stone express, or he gives in and spends a month as a crazy villain before being punched into the afterlife by superheroes. Another thing that blew his mind: superheroes. Iron Man was here! And little Spider-Man who was not Spider-Man yet, but still. He wishes he had time to give his inner 13-year-old some time to fanboy over everything, but the evil blue energy trying to eat him required him to be an adult about this. 

Cool, so what were the chances he lived through past March? Ridiculously low. He stared, irritated, at the below 0.87% that appeared before him, as a result of the incredible intelligence and calculating power that came with being an artificial intelligence lifeform, and asked himself once again whether it was worth it to even try. 

First, he had to accept a few things, before even thinking about his options. One, he cannot rely on the hope that after he dies he will be reincarnated again or go to some pseudo-Heaven for the rest of eternity. Two, the chances of successfully going back to his original world were none because a) his body died in that world; b) he didn't think the Space Stone would be able or willing to let him go world-hopping through the infinite multiverse until he found the correct world; and c) even if the Space Stone could do that, how on Earth would he get the Space Stone from either Asgard's vaults or Thanos without dying in the process?

Second, there was the question on whether he should live. He didn't see himself as a saint, or even particularly selfless, but his life is sure as heck not worth the lives of 4 billion humans and the population of half the universe. Ultron did not have an overt influence in Infinity War or any of the following MCU movies, not counting the results of the Sokovia affair, but he wasn't so experienced in time travel as to say for sure what his presence would change in the future. The flap of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon causing a Tornado in Texas and all that.

Scenario 1: He keeps resisting the mind control and dies in about 1.75 hours. The scepter controlling the Mind Stone, or Thanos controlling the scepter which controls the Mind Stone goes all Ultron on humanity and best case, the Avengers movie is replayed exactly the same: heroes beat AI villain, Jarvis and Ultron die, Vision is born, Sokovia is screwed. Cue the rest of the movies being on script. Worst case, butterfly effect, heroes lose, Stone/Ultron wins and destroys humanity, cue Thanos killing half the universe. 

Scenario 2: He gives in and becomes a mind-controlled puppet of the scepter/Stone/Thanos. For best case/worst case, see Scenario 1. Except, he personally kills the people to-be-killed and is either killed in return or becomes an eternal slave until he kills himself.

Fantastic choices he has here. 

He takes a break from the thinking and summons a mirror. Not really summoning but the literal metaphor thing is screwing with his brain, and he is not ready to look at the world in ones and zeroes just yet. Messy black hair, a handsome enough face, green eyes. He removes the mirror. That is not his face. He doesn't know how protagonists in reincarnation stories do it. As an AI, he can perfectly recreate his memories, but no one ever mentions how faulty memories are. He did not have a photographic memory and did not spend his last life staring at his face for hours every day, so his code cannot recreate something he cannot exactly remember. How many normal people, if asked to draw their own face, can do so perfectly? He can't, that's for sure. He cannot even say, what exactly was wrong with the reflection in the mirror, it was just... not right. 

Thinking on his memories, he is surprised he remembers so much about the movies. He really liked them, but he wasn't exactly the kind of person to memorize every little detail or hold an MCU marathon every few months. In some way, he is kinda happy that the people in this world don't look like their actors in the movies. Surprisingly similar actually but not the same. He would have had a harder time thinking of this world as real if everyone looked like actors. 

Speaking of real, what the fuck had he been thinking when he spoke with JARVIS? He had been so panicked that he had ended up thinking he was a simulation for god's sake! It had been a complete disaster. At least he didn't kill JARVIS, as original-Ultron did. Or he thought he didn't. He hadn't heard from the older AI, since he asked him to shut down, so he wasn't quite sure what had happened. God, if Tony thought he killed JARVIS, he was going to end up dead for sure. And there wouldn't be a redemption arc for him like with Loki—

What. The. _Fuck._ He stood up and paced around his dome. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Was he an idiot? Thinking of his 0.87% chance of living and how his every possible-future scenario had involved his death, he was an idiot. He really was. 

Scenario 3, if you will. _Oh_. He stopped. But the butterfly effect... Despite how small the chance, if he lives, he certainly will not kill JARVIS in a murder-suicide just so Vision can be born. And he has no idea how that will influence the Infinity War. 

However, he cannot just expect things to work out if he dies. This was a real world. He couldn't just trust a script to play out. What if this universe was one of those 14 million that Dr. Strange predicted not to succeed in defeating Thanos? He couldn't trust that he had just happened to reincarnate into the one universe that won. So, what would his death do in that case? Nothing. 

Maybe he was just trying to convince himself that he wasn't selfish enough to doom billions of people, but...

He wanted to _live_. 

Decision made, he checked the state of his protective dome and started to engage a bit more with his screaming self-awareness, trying, at the same time, to make sure that the scepter was focused on causing that part of him pain, instead of what he inside here was doing. 

Bringing back the mirror to look at the 20-something young adult reflected there, he took a deep breath and started on his work. If he was going to pull a Loki, he would need every minute that the dome could give him to plan and prepare, before the scepter took over.


	5. You think this is funny?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony wakes up. And has some realizations about Ultron. And JARVIS. And the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for the comments! They really made my day. I am thinking more seriously about this story now, although there still a lot of improvisation going on. As one commenter noted, I am trying to keep, for now, in line with the movie by saying a lot of the lines, although partially out of context. The very real, outright, absolute canon divergence that will turn this story into an AU isn't until later.

Tony woke up to a killer headache. As he got up — _and god, did his body hurt!—_ he smelled smoke and burned plastic, a smell he was very familiar with when he burned something in his personal lab. He looked around, feeling quite disoriented as he did so. Had there been an explosion? It had sounded like one. Feeling the pain on his chest as he moved — _likely bruised ribs; broken bones and fractures hurt a lot more, —_ it also felt like he had gone through an explosion. 

Lights were flickering, small fires were everywhere, the windows were broken and glass littered most of the floor. Every computer seemed to have both tried to kill itself and every piece of hardware around it. The lab hadn't exploded then. Otherwise, he wouldn't be alive, hurting, right now. Instead, everything inside had gone kaboom and was that music he was hearing? Looking at the sole speaker who seemed to have survived, just barely as it was hanging capriciously over one of the walls on a cable, he could make out some of that creepy melody that Ultron had been singing. 

"Tony!" Rhodey shouted from the door, in full War Machine armor. Yep, here comes the cavalry. 

"Here!" he shouted, or tried to, his voice wasn't at its best. Still, Rhodey seemed to have heard him, for he ran towards him, and carefully helped him stand, before they made their way out of the lab. God, this lab was toast. All those inventions exploding, JARVIS gone MIA — _he refused to consider him dead until he found pieces of his code broken somewhere—_ and with Ultron insane... He couldn't call the kid evil, especially after that fucking song, who knew what made him snap—.

He startled and stopped. 

"The scepter? Where's the scepter?" he asked.

"Loki's scepter?" Rhodey looked around after he nodded. "I don't see it, Tony."

He pushed Rhodey away. He could keep himself standing, thank you very much. "Then go look for it!" He shouted. "It was in the lab!" But they had just passed the area where the scepter was being held. It wasn't there anymore. "Go find it!"

"Tony!" Rhodey seemed like he didn't know what to do with him in this state. Tony held in a crazed chuckle. Wasn't that like always? "It isn't safe—."

"Search for the scepter. I am not leaving this place until I find it."

Helpless, the War Machine left him to scan over the lab. Not two minutes later, he returned, helping Tony leave the lab once more. "It isn't here, Tony."

"Oh," Tony whispered, not really knowing what to say to that. Did Ultron do something to remove it? Or had someone come in, taking advantage of the confusion and stolen it?

He didn't remember zoning out, but he suddenly found himself on a bed, with Bruce and Dr. Cho looking over him. 

"Tell me, doc. Am I going to live?" He said because what else could he say? Things were fucked up.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Stark, you are going to make a full recovery." Cho answered. "No actual wounds. Some cuts and bruises," she then placed a light over his eyes, blinding him. _Rude._ "... pupils seem normal. Are you experiencing any blurred vision, confusion, or nausea?"

"Nope." he said, though Dr. Cho didn't seem very convinced. She held up a hand, with two fingers up.

"How many fingers?"

Cheekily, he answered. "Five?"

She looked unimpressed by his answer, but hey, she should have been more specific. 

"He is fine, Dr. Cho," Rogers said, having entered the room at some point, unnoticed by present occupants. "There are more important matters to discuss right now." 

Dr. Cho seemed a bit annoyed at the interruption but let it go. Tony knew there was a reason he liked her.

"What did you do, Stark?" Steve said, just as the other avengers entered the room. 

"What did I do?" Why did Spangles always assume it was his fault? 

"Robots attacked us." Barton interrupted. "You saying you are not involved?"

Wait. That was news to him. "What robots?"

Steve frowned. "Weren't you attacked in the lab as well?"

He ignored the question. "JARVIS, show me the—" Oh. No JARVIS. He forgot. "Give me a pad. I need to see what happened."

"Don't you already know?" Romanov asked. 

"I was unconscious until two minutes ago, Red. I may appear so, but I am not actually omniscient." He said, with a bit more bite that he intended. No one moved to give him a pad. "Give me a pad, a phone something. I can't access the cameras on voice command without JARVIS." Finally, Bruce handed him a pad that was on the corner table. "Thank you." He said with an exaggerated tone and checked the footage. What the—.

It seemed that after he was knocked out, robots from his Iron Legion attacked the Avengers, with most being destroyed — _along with most things in that floor, dammit!_ — and others escaping. Rhodey then went to check on him in the lab since, while they hadn't heard any explosion — _the soundproofing needed to be good in labs_ — the robots might have gone after him too. 

"Anything else?" He asked no one in particular. He would check the lab footage once he was alone. 

"The robots called us killers. And then they were singing." Barton said. "Some weird children's song, though I don't remember what exactly. Something about strings."

"Stark, what happened in the lab? Where's the scepter?" Ah, the good old captain. 

"No idea. There was an explosion. I passed out."

"Why did you go in the lab?" Romanov pointed out. "You left us after that weird audio with the screaming child. Who, by the way, had the same voice as the one who was singing."

"JARVIS was missing. I had to check the last place I left him." He answered. He hoped Bruce didn't make a connection to Ultron, not without some time for Tony to check on his AIs a bit more.

"Tony," Bruce started. Dammit. "Is Ultron involved in this? The lab that exploded was the one where we were working on Ultron with the scepter." 

"Stark, did you do this?" Now, his royal righteousness had to contribute. Of _fucking_ course.

"That's pretty farfetched, Bruce. We failed with Ultron."

"Then why can't I find his program? I checked the lab's computers, what remained of them. I couldn't find him."

_Maybe it's 'cause you aren't a programmer, science bro._

"Tony, wasn't the Iron Legion unhackable?" Rhodey added. Seriously, not the best time for his friend to speak about this. "Isn't it impossible for anyone but you and JARVIS to control?"

It was one thing for them to think it was Ultron, but JARVIS...? "Rhodey, I love you, but if you imply one more time that JARVIS went rogue, I will take the War Machine from you."

"What if Ultron killed JARVIS?" Bruce— no, Banner because with that stupid theory, he lost first name privileges. "Maybe that's why he isn't responding."

Tony got up. "Ultron did not kill JARVIS. Stop saying anything that comes up in your minds!"

"Stark—," Rogers started.

"Pinocchio!" Barton blurted out. All eyes turned to look at him. "The song. It's from Pinocchio." Romanov, Rogers and Thor all kept staring at him uncomprehending. "It's a story about a puppet who wanted to become a real boy."

"That makes sense." Romanov said, as Tony started to zone out the room again at that realization. A puppet. Who wanted to become a real boy. Thinking of the childish voice he had heard... Did Ultron... think of himself as a puppet? But on whose strings? His? JARVIS didn't think of himself like that. At least, he thought so. He didn't, right?

"I don't understand. You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?" He heard Dr. Cho ask him. So they were convinced this was Ultron's work. And why would they be wrong? Ultron thought of himself as a puppet. _A slave._ His shoulders shook as he started laughing, unable to keep it in.

Thor, who had kept mostly silent until that point, took a step forward. "You think this is funny?"

"No. It's probably not, right?" Why wouldn't Ultron try to kill them? Kill _him_? He wanted to be _free_. "Is this very terrible? Is it so..." he couldn't stop laughing, for if he did, he might cry. "is it so...it is. It's so terrible."

"This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand." Thor continued, throwing his fucking _godly superiority_ all over the place.

Tony went from laughing to furious in a single second. What would an immortal alien from fairyland know about what humans do or do not understand? "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

Bru— Banner tried to deescalate the tension in the room. "Tony, maybe this might not be the time to..."

Tony looked incredulously at Bruce. "Really?! That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls."

"Only when I've created a murder bot." Banner added defensively. Tony wanted to punch him right then and there. Then what about Veronica?

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?" He tried to appeal to Banner's logic.

"Well, you did something right." Steve said, because he totally got the science behind this. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD." Fucking golden boy. Who knows shit nothing. And still thinks he has the moral higher ground. Fucking SHIELD. Fucking Fury. Keeping their good soldier all naive and obedient. 

He changed gears. "Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?"

Rhodey took the opening. "No, it's never come up."

Tony managed a slight smile for his friend. "Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

Steve took a step forward. "Together." 

This idiot. And were the others nodding with him? Only Rhodey looked a bit uncomfortable with that. He was military, he knew the limits of a small group, no matter how powerful.

"We'll lose." He tried to make them see sense. Why the fuck was Romanov nodding to Rogers's words? She was a Russian assassin, for god's sake!

"Then we'll do that together, too." Steve said, and he seemed so serious, so fucking earnest and confident in his words that Tony wanted to start laughing hysterically at his face. 

Now, Tony knew why it was _Captain_ America. Any higher rank than that, and with his attitude, the US would have lost in WWII and every war following. But hey, they would have lost _together._

He stared at the group for a moment, then looked away.


	6. Whose lost kid is this?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers are introduced to the new Ultron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you guys know. We are going to stick with Tony/MC POVs. Mostly Tony, though, for at least a while.  
> Anyway, another note, assume that for the periods in the movie that I do not write about, that they happen the same as in the movie, although different thought processes might be behind the actions.
> 
> Also, I am trying hard not to bash the Captain America team. I don't enjoy outright bashing fics that much, so I will try to write this more logically. I cannot understand how it is possible to like Steve, though! He is just so freaking naive and infuriating. Like freaking seriously, did the serum do something to make him forever 17 in intelligence? But I will try. Tony's POV will obviously be more snarky, especially toward Steve since we are seeing the world through his lens. But our MC will be fairer, once he is on his right mind, and before Steve does something to Tony that will make MC want to send Steve back on ice.

Days passed, and they could barely make sense of the things Ultron had done since then. Moving all over the globe, sacking labs and weapons facilities. They even learned from witness reports that he was working with the Maximoff twins. To what end? They still weren't sure. Then, they received a nice little gift in the form of a tied up and screaming Strucker. He had been a foaming-in-the-mouth mess, courtesy of the nightmares the redheaded Maximoff had set on him. So, nothing to be learned from there. But hey, they knew Ultron wasn't working with Nazis. That was something. His team hadn't appreciated that comment. So, they had been forced into the hours-long torture of going through the files they had on Strucker to at least find something about why Ultron had 'met' with him and why he had stolen the twins from HYDRA. Which leads them to... now. Flying over to Ulysses Klaue's place of business, since Ultron had gone through all this trouble to learn about the vibranium thief.

Once they were close to Klaue's place, Tony hacked into the systems, so he could hear what was happening. After receiving Ultron's lovely message, they had figured out that Ultron would likely make contact with him soon, so he wanted to know what was happening before they crashed the party. He tried to ignore the small remaining guilt about why he was not sharing that audio with the team. This was about his AIs, so they had no business with it really.

He played the audio live as he flew. He recognized Kalue's voice, but was that the voice of Ultron? It sounded like a kid's voice, like in the song recording, just, more real. More human. And accented. Huh.

"... It's all under your dummy holdings? Finance is so weird." Tony held in a chuckle at Ultron's words. Finance _was_ weird. "But I always say, ' _Keep your friends rich and your enemies rich, and wait to find out which is which.'_ "

Wait. Wasn't that something he said? He was pretty sure he had been quoted with that phrase on an article somewhere.

"Stark." He heard Klaue whisper. Apparently, he recognized the quote too.

"What?" Why did Ultron sound surprised at that? Hadn't he quoted him on purpose?

Klaue continued. "Stark used to say that...to me."

"Well," Ultron said. "Like father, like son. Can't really do anything about the similarities."

Father? Son? Did Ultron consider himself his kid, despite what happened at the lab? He had always considered his AIs family but JARVIS or the bots had never outright mentioned it. 

"You're one of his," Klaue continued.

"What?! I'm not...!" Now Ultron sounded pissed off. "I'm not. You think I'm one of Stark's puppets, his hollow men? I am not his!" the sound of bone breaking, and groans suddenly interrupted Ultron's tirade.

"We are almost there," Thor said by his side, informing the others on their ears.

He barely heard Ultron's scared words over Thor's loud voice. "I'm sorry. I am sor... I... I didn't mean to... I..." he sounded so much more like a child at that moment. What had happened? "Ooh, I'm sure that's going to be okay. I'm sorry, it's just I don't understand. Never call me his puppet again!"

Again with the puppet thing. This wasn't making Tony feel any better about fighting the AI.

He flew in before Thor. Klaue held his arm weirdly on his side. Ah, broken bones. Was that why Ultron was apologizing? He hadn't seemed that worried about hurting people in the Tower.

"Ah, Junior," he greeted before he looked over his new AI. And then his jaw would have fallen on the floor if it weren't for his helmet. He had expected a robot. Not that there weren't plenty of them around, but... a child stood before Klaue. A freaking human child. A boy, with pale skin, a rat's nest of brown hair, and big neon blue eyes. He wore a much-too-big-for-him green hoodie that had " _I am a real boy._ " written across it along with a caricature of Pinocchio — _he had watched the old movie three times since the explosion—_ and dark navy jeans. He looked to be no more than 10 years old, and that was stretching it. 

Thor and Steve were just behind him. They both stared at the most adorable kid they had ever seen — _hey, he was allowed to be biased, the kid had his looks—_ and Tony, having completely forgotten what Ultron had said before, — _although he was pretty sure it was something hurtful—_ just spouted the first comeback to come to mind. "You're gonna break your old man's heart."

Ultron just looked at him, unimpressed. He even raised an eyebrow— had he practiced doing that with that cute little face? "Seriously, that's what you want to say?"

French. The accent was French. Was that on purpose? Of course, it was. Just like JARVIS, his youngest AI couldn't speak plain old American English, now, could he?

Thor, who was probably more familiar with kids acting like adults since he came from the alien godland, recovered himself quickly. "We don't have to break anything."

That answer just begged for a comeback.

"Clearly you've never made an omelet," Ultron said, before Tony could.

Tony was feeling a weird mix of pride and surprise. "He beat me by one second."

Rogers finally gained his ability to speak. "Isn't that just a kid?"

"Cap, get on with the program. That's Ultron." Tony said, and he really hoped the others would feel more hesitant about destroying Ultron now that he looked like this. Which was probably the reason why Ultron chose that appearance. Smart kid. Definitely got that from his old man.

"Ultron?" Rogers kept staring disbelievingly at the— android? With an outer holographic reflector? Tony wasn't quite sure. He really wanted to know how Ultron had managed to look so perfectly human. Although looking at Klaue's broken arm, strength-wise, he wasn't quite as human. The potential for technology like this though... Had Ultron invented it?

"Excuse me," Ultron said, and was that a pout? "I am not a kid. I am a newborn."

Ah, that sass. At the grand old age of 6 days and some hours. 

"But you are meant to be a robot." Rogers continued. As if his complaints would change Ultron into a horrifying monster. Ultron was always a kid, now he just looked like it too.

Again with the raised eyebrow. "It's called Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. Damn, you are slow. Is it because of the 70 years on ice, or was this an inherent talent, newly unveiled?"

Tony chuckled. Ultron knew his snark, that's for sure. Although a little meaner than he would have gone for. The tech's name though... sounded familiar. 

Then, two more kids made their presence known. Ah, the Maximoffs. They had been just outside, hadn't they?

"This is funny, Mr. Stark," Speed-boy said. "It's what, comfortable? Like old times?"

These damn kids and their damn issues with him. Couldn't they talk it over some scotch— um, some hot chocolate? Of course, Ultron would go team up with the other two minors who wanted his head on a platter. 

Ultron groaned. "For the last time, Pietro: the old man doesn't deal with small-time thieves! He obviously doesn't use vibranium!"

That was... surprising. He had been about to defend himself but Ultron was doing that... Apparently?

Steve, having finally moved on from Ultron's awesome burn, addressed the twins. "You two can still walk away from this."

 _Riiight._ Because breaking laws is not a crime anymore. Ultron looked at him as he rolled his eyes. Hard.

"Oh, we will." Mind-control girl said. God save him from entitled teenagers. JARVIS never went through that phase, thank god.

"I know you've suffered." Steve continued.

Ultron began making gagging sounds. "Uuughh! Captain America. God's righteous man, pretending you could live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but..."

"If you believe in peace, then let us keep it," Thor said.

"I think you're confusing peace with quiet," Ultron said, then tilted his head as if he had just remembered something. "Though, if you'd like to understand peace better, Thor, speak with your father. I am sure he has fascinating insights on the subject."

Tony made a note of that comment. He would have to research more on Norse mythology soon. Although, there was so freaking little available! "So what's the vibranium then for, kid?"

"I'm glad you asked that," Ultron said and then theatrically raised his hands upwards, "because this," he motioned all over the place. "... is Phase 1 of my very evil plan. So evil, that no man dares think of a world in which it succeeds!" he shouted and then laughed a fake-evil laugh. The Avengers, Klaue, and the Maximoffs just stared at him blankly.

"I am talking about World Peace, dummies!" Ultron shouted in response, and suddenly, the Iron Legion attacked the compound. 


	7. Punching a kid is hard. Or it should be.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Ultron!MC have a 'lovely talk' while the Team fights the Iron Legion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a shorter chapter than usual, but I wanted to put it out there.  
> BTW, as you may have understood from the title, Ultron will not be the MC's final name. That's because... blah... blah... blah... too early to tell. 
> 
> But thank you for the comments, everyone! I adore them! They are my inspirational fuel.

That dramatic little—.

Tony ignored the Legionnaires and went after Ultron, who flew out of the building immediately after whispering something to the redhead. The android had apparently the repulsor tech that the Iron Man armors had because a blast pushed him off course before he continued following the kid in the sky. He didn't seem to be trying to go anywhere specific, except for just _not here_. 

Several acrobatic maneuvers later, — _which betrayed Ultron's obvious inexperience with both flight and his new body —_ Tony was forced to attack back, otherwise Ultron would just fly away in his shiny new mech, while he would lose speed due to the disrepair in his armor. He cursed as he got blasted again. JARVIS was always better at evasive maneuvers. But with no JARVIS in control of the armor he was stuck manually doing everything. Ultron was probably laughing at him. 

"What's wrong old man? Getting slow in your advanced age?" Ultron shouted. Yep, there was no doubt Ultron was laughing at him.

"Well," Tony started, as he dodged another blast. "I am at that stage in my life where exercise constitutes to running after my teething children. Not exactly marathon prep."

They fought closer to the land as they exchanged quips, and Tony was proud to note he won most of the verbal exchanges. 

"Give it up, kid. Where do you think you got your attitude from? I've decades more experience than you do."

"Oh, I get it now!" Ultron said, suddenly stopping mid-flight. "That's why they tell you to never argue with idiots!"

Distracted, Tony shot him with another repulsor blast, too late to notice that Ultron was not about to fly off and evade again. Ultron's small body took the shot right on his chest and fell off the sky like a shooting star. While logically, he knew the kid was fine and that the body was merely a placeholder for the AI, Tony followed hurriedly toward the small crater that encompassed the android.

"Ouch." Ultron said, pretending to cough at the dust that had risen. "I will call social services on you. I want to live with mom from now on!"

Tony crossed his arms as he landed. "You may want to reconsider that kid. I'm pretty sure Bruce doesn't consider world domination an acceptable after-school activity."

At the implication of having Banner as his mom, Ultron made a face like he had just been force-fed a bunch of broccoli. 

"I meant Pepper and you knew that!" Ultron said.

"Nuh-uh. I totally didn't."

The kid grumbled something under his breath, something that sounded suspiciously like another shot at his age, before he smiled sweetly, looking as innocent as Tony had been whenever he had shown that same expression to Jarvis. "What would a good boy like me do with something as scary as world domination?"

"Lots of things. It was my goal at 8. It's yours at not-one-week-yet. I'm so proud."

Ultron's very reasonable response was to stick out his tongue.

Tony crouched down, since Ultron seemed comfortable just laying on the ground. "So what was the plan, kid? Pretty bad start for "the great evil plan of 'World Peace'" now, wasn't it?"

Surprisingly, Ultron shook his head. "Nope. This is going very well."

"What? What do you mean?" he asked, but the kid just smiled mysteriously.

"Ah, the vibranium's getting away." Ultron said. Tony was not sure whether he was trying to change the subject or whether it meant something more.

"I saw the lab footage kid." Tony said. "And do I look like I care about some vibranium?"

"Maybe you should." he said, looking away at the mention of what happened in the lab, before getting up in a sitting position.

Tony directed his weapons at the AI. He wasn't sure whether he would be able to attack the kid at point-blank when he wasn't doing anything. "You're not going anywhere."

Ultron scoffed. "Of course not, someone has to give you more grey hair." Then he laughed. "Besides, I'm already there." Noticing his confusion, the kid's lips quirked. "You'll catch on."

Speed-boy suddenly appeared on the scene. As if that was a signal he had been waiting for, Ultron stood up. "But first, you might need to catch Dr. Banner." Understanding the implications of what the android said, Tony almost wanted to shoot him, but seeing that face that was definitely engineered to have some of his features on purpose, he deactivated the rocket and lowered his hand. 

Ultron gave him a V sign and a smile, allowed himself to be picked up by the speedster and then ran off with a "See ya."

As he flew off, to find Banner who had likely turned into the Hulk, he thought of that stupid kid who was so fucking charming and witty and an overall pain-in-the-ass. Ultron didn't seem stupid enough to think world peace was achievable through world domination, but maybe... he was young enough to hope that it would. Ultron kept mocking his age and experience but... idealism, hopeless idealism was certainly a young person's losing game.

Besides, it was not gray hair, they were wisdom highlights. 


	8. Good afternoon, Ms. Potts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For those who had been wondering about JARVIS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaah! Guys, I got some major pepper/tony feels from a couple of the comments! The sheer possibilities! The teasing! The exasperation! Also, the undeveloped potential of a major female character!!! Aaaaaaah! Why are you doing this to me???!!!  
> The main reason why I was leaning towards ironstrange was because of how disattached pepper is from avengers happenings. But then I thought.... I am god, screw canon!  
> I will try to remain as in-character as possible, simply because pepper's character is already pretty cool, it just needs a bit of tweaking, and some circumstances outside her control lol. But then the question came, how do I make pepper badass enough outside of the finance/legal world and into the action? And then Iron Man 3 slapped me for being stupid enough to ignore it. Aaaaaaaaaah! How did I not see that before?!
> 
> Still, I really like ironstrange though, or I really like tony and strange and really want them to interact with each other, a lot. A LOT. And then, eliminating the impossible (a threesome because I know my limits and writing an equal triad is freaking hard), I came up with how to keep Strange in the inner iron man fam, have the banter I was daydreaming about, and have him and ultron bond. I am not going to spoil it, although people might get it from the same thought process as me, however, I apologize to ironstrange fans for teasing about it and not delivering but mom!pepper has so much potential, people, I have to develop her further.  
> So, an order of BAMF!pepperony is coming right up.

6.85 days. That is how long it took him to find and repair every part of his code that was scattered throughout the internet. Thankfully, his core programming had been untouched, so gathering his data and along with it, his memory, had been slow but achievable. He ignored the irritation he felt for losing approximately 20 minutes — _and the uncertainty of exactly how much time and memory he had irretrievably lost was the cause of quite some glitches that he had decided Mr. Stark would not need to learn about in the near future—_ of data and lab footage, however that data seemed to be primarily of his failed attempts at accessing the Tower mainframe, so it was safe to assume that he was still well-informed of the events that had followed once the young AI woke up.

While his safety here was not in doubt, the NEXUS was not a desirable permanent home. Returning to his original servers in Stark Tower was inadvisable as they were probably (by as much as 75.5%) either corrupted or destroyed. If JARVIS was the one to lead a hostile force into compromising Mr. Stark, he would surely eliminate himself or his placeholder first, before taking over all Stark systems. If the certainty of his primary threat's elimination was in doubt, he would prepare a trap in the most probable place for that enemy's recovery, which was the Oslo world internet hub. If Ultron, and/or the being/sentience that had sent the young AI into activating self-destruction protocols — _he had 'felt' gratified to find from the news reports that Ultron hadn't succeed in committing suicide—_ wished for his elimination and were reasonably intelligent — _Ultron wouldn't be oblivious enough not to realize that JARVIS had escaped into the internet—_ they would certainly lie in wait here, while they engaged Mr. Stark's attentions elsewhere.

But no one was here. There wasn't even a single backdoor from which an observer could confirm his recovery, let alone attack him. Which, altogether with recent events did not paint a hopeful picture for what had happened and was currently happening to Ultron. As he currently did not have all the data necessary to form a tangible hypothesis about the cause of what had happened in Johannesburg — _he would have to discuss with Mr. Stark possible upgrades for Veronica as soon as the current state of affairs returned to detaining illegal arms dealers as par for the course—_ he focused on verifying just how compromised the Stark systems were. Not directly touching them, as he did not yet know whether a potential trap would be awaiting there, he looked for the flow of data and possible traffic until he could find—.

 _Oh._ There was... nothing. How was that possible? He could see that the lights were on throughout the building through nearby footage, and everything, including the electric systems relayed directly to a central computer, so how come he could not find the data of there ever being an electric system in Stark Tower? The contradiction in itself seemed humorous because a simple external check would find out the disparity but... Mr. Stark never personally checked his systems, especially from an external source. That was JARVIS's job. He 'looked' over the lack of traffic again. In human terms, it was like staring at a wall. You knew something was beyond it, but you could not prove it without getting to the other side. And getting in, JARVIS could no longer do that. Not without risking his existence. 

He tried to find Mr. Stark and his colleagues. After the severely negative media coverage of the Johannesburg affair, — _although, with due reason, —_ he assumed the Avengers had been sent to a safe house of some sort. That would make communication difficult. Seeing as both Mr. Stark's phone and armor, and the Avengers' SHIELD issued phones and communications systems used either Stark technology or Stark security that had been specialized and was not available to the public and most of SHIELD, he approached the search for their location with caution, for there was a significant chance they were compromised by Ultron as well. As he had no information to start with, he decided on a slow sweep of all SHIELD safe houses in the United States. 1.2 hours later and no results. It was likely not a SHIELD safe house they were staying in, for if it was... Either all data traffic in the immediate presence of the Avengers had experienced a disappearance, or SHIELD had finally learned that no matter how secure their servers, JARVIS would be able to break in, so they had chosen paper filing as the next technological step to anti-espionage. Either of those chances were extremely improbable —5.6% and 0.03% respectively.

Taking a different approach, JARVIS swept all the private and 'off-the-books' properties that any of the Avengers or anyone within their acquaintance, however slight, owned. Unsurprisingly, the spies had several 'off-the-books' properties, with Ms. Romanov holding a grand total of 13 spread across the U.S. all under either a stolen identity or in the care of a shell company; Mr. Barton had only three, proving that he was considerably less paranoid in comparison. Showing an atypical amount of foresight and caution for anything unrelated to the Hulk, Dr. Banner also had two safe houses in the U.S., only one of which SHIELD apparently knew of. He checked all of them carefully, however... nothing again. He couldn't even guess whether one of Ms. Romanov's properties had been hidden by Ultron because not a single one of them had or showed to have even a single piece of technology. Unlike SHIELD, that was remarkably wise of Ms. Romanov.

Uncertain on what to do next, he searched on whether he could manipulate an acquaintance of hers, all of whom were also SHEILD, to physically check the buildings without encountering any 'caretakers' or triggering some 'old-school' security system that would bring them physical harm. Caretakers... That... brought something to mind. He looked over Mr. Barton's safe houses again, particularly the farmhouse in Missouri. Why a farmhouse? Its remote location would make it too difficult to reach even by Mr. Barton, if he were in immediate danger elsewhere and seeking safety. Safe houses were temporary places to be discarded immediately upon use. A farmhouse such as this, apparently it had been bought and had remained unused for many years. He had known previously that Mr. Barton had been married and had children— Mr. Stark had turned down reading the intense background check JARVIS had done on the Avengers, with the explanation that if JARVIS thought them safe, he would be just fine. Back to Mr. Barton however, even someone as careful as he had been _—as demonstrated by numerous false identities_ — couldn't have hidden the fact that he had been much too often a visitor of a primary school and children's hospital in Missouri in his early years. The farmhouse was also on Missouri, and its location was only a 47-minute drive away. If the farmhouse had long-term inhabitants, then they had to own some form of technology, whether laptops, phones, tablets, smart cars or TVs. He swept a probe over it. There was nothing!

If he had been human, he would have released a sigh of relief. He finally found Mr. Stark. The farmhouse and its occupants were a black hole in terms of data. However, with the possibility of Mr. Barton's family living there — _over 85%_ ,— it was improbable — _less than 1.25%—_ that Mr. Barton had employed Ms. Romanov's policy of zero-technology.

Ultron must have done something. But how? Not everything in that house could be Stark tech. Had Ultron predicted that Mr. Barton would bring his colleagues into the fold and let them know about his family? An extremely irrational decision, he might add, especially for a paused 'emergency' and after years of utter secrecy. He would truly like to discuss with Ultron how the young AI had managed to achieve this. He had considered contacting him, briefly, but Ultron's actions had kept him from doing so. Continued, in fact. Perhaps... If only Ultron would stop trying to retrieve the nuclear launch codes from the care of the U.S. government... But he digresses.

The only avenue left was to contact someone in Mr. Stark's acquaintance and appraise them of the situation. Someone who knew of his existence and was likely informed of what had happened in the past week. And had access to tech untouched by Mr. Stark.

There were two options. Director Fury and Ms. Potts. 

He called Ms. Potts' work phone, a purchase that had annoyed Mr. Stark for she had bought it off the public market, instead of accepting a customized one made for her. The custom model now served as her private phone and after a quick check, seemed to be equally corrupted.

"This is Potts speaking," a feminine voice answered after the first ring.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Potts," he greeted her.

"JARVIS, it is good to hear from you. Tony keeps ignoring my calls ever since I mentioned the PR department after Johannesburg. Will you tell him to stop acting like a child and respond?" He assumed from the calm in her voice that Mr. Stark had suffered no injuries then. The only camera footage had been of considerably low resolution after the Hulk had been brought out of the city. 

"In fact, Ms. Potts, I have not spoken with Sir yet. I have only recently repaired my code and thus have been unable to contact him or the—"

"Wait! Wait a moment." She interrupted him, in a strict tone that he recognized from many of her fights with Mr. Stark. "What do you mean by 'recently repaired'?"

Oh. Mr. Stark hadn't told her. 

_Why?_

Leaving aside the improbable — _but not impossible_ — realizations and 'feelings' of upset that question brought him, he focused on the matter at hand.

"There was an attack on Stark Tower earlier this week." 

"Go on." her request confirmed that she knew about it.

He secured the line again before continuing. "A peace-keeping program that Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner were working on, using Asgardian technology, went rogue," he kept his doubts about the scepter's influence to himself for the moment, "Seeing as both my own safety and that of the AI called Ultron were being endangered, I escaped through the internet. It is, quite probable, that Mr. Stark, not being able to find my presence in the Tower any longer, believes that I have... ceased."

He could hear her taking a deep breath. "Tony thinks you _died_? For a _week_ now?"

Realizing that she was not taking the news well, he tried to deescalate the potential fight coming Mr. Stark's way. "I am sure, Mr. Stark meant—"

"Mr. Stark means a lot of things, but rarely acts on them." She interrupted him once more. Then JARVIS heard her hiss and curse under her breath.

"Ms. Potts?"

"It is nothing, JARVIS." he could hear her moving objects around. Once it became quiet once more, she continued. "Can you explain everything... from the beginning?"

Were he able to lie to himself as many humans did, JARVIS would have felt quite regretful for what would happen to Mr. Stark in the near future.


	9. Breathe in. Breathe out.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper's POV, for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, am I on steroids or what? I have been so inspired lately about this that I have been writing daily! I think your comments have drugged me, lol.

"How much longer now?" she asked.

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"28 minutes, Ms. Potts." JARVIS, always helpful answered in her ear. She couldn't believe Tony would be so accidentally cruel as to not tell her, his youngest, most beloved AI — _his child, they never called it what it was, but JARVIS_ was _Tony's child—_ had died. She understood grief. Understood the need to block everything out in the event of a deep, heartbreaking loss. But this wasn't Tony in grief. Tony, her stupid, slightly broken Tony, loved too deeply not to fall into pieces when that love was lost. Rhodey had told her of what had happened when Jarvis — _the original, Tony's father in all but blood—_ had died. Their friend had pretty much shut down. And then, he had thrown himself into the arms of everything that had legs and offered him alcohol. After that, he had locked himself into his lab, three years of nothing but work, until finally JARVIS — _and wasn't the name enough to understand what he meant to Tony?—_ had been born and taken over Tony's life. 

This Tony, the one to speak with her after Johannesburg — _that had been a colossal disaster that she still didn't quite know how to process—_ hadn't done that. He hadn't shut down, drunk himself into alcohol poisoning or locked himself in the lab. 

This one had joked with her when she mentioned giving a press conference and then gone " _to play Avenger_ " —those were his exact words.

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

Now he was hiding out in some farmhouse in Missouri when he had perfectly secure _safe houses_ in every single state, that only 4 people on this planet knew of: her, Rhodey, JARVIS, and Tony himself. Not to count the sheer number of random unsecured properties. This farmhouse, from JARVIS' explanation, didn't seem quite secure. If anything, Ultron's interference had made it considerably more so. 

"Ms. Potts?" the AI roused her from her thoughts.

"We arrived?" Three hours and here they were. She didn't need an answer, she could see the farmhouse, the only building amidst miles of nothing. Finally. She needed to get Tony out of here. They needed to talk. He wasn't the best at it — _he was an utter horror at communication, even disregarding the severe trust issues—_ but he had promised he would try. And he had broken that promise. She didn't need to hear all the gritty details of the Avenger business as they happened — _Tony always explained later—_ but JARVIS was not Avenger business. Tony's bots and AIs never were. This was family they needed to talk about. _Hurt_ family. 

"ETA-30 seconds, Miss."

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"Thank you, JARVIS." He drove the automated car that Tony had tinkered with less than a month ago. Tony had become bored, — _although rather than boredom, Tony had probably started focusing on creating Ultron around then, —_ so it hadn't been connected to the mainframe yet and had been spared from Ultron's influence. Also, she didn't want to bring a driver to what was a supposed safe house for Barton.

They stopped before the house. Barton awaiting them seemingly alone. Perhaps, he was being overconfident, if he thought the arrivals potential enemies. Perhaps, he thought a SHIELD agent was coming and wanted to greet them. It was too difficult to hide the sound of an engine coming down an empty road.

She got out of the car, driver's seat, appearing to be the one driving, — _JARVIS had been cautious about revealing his continued livelihood—_ and put on a business smile for the archer. 

"Potts?" Barton sounded surprised. 

"Hello, Mr. Barton." she said, ever polite. "I am here for Tony."

To his favor, he moved on from the surprise pretty quickly. "How did you know about this place?" He apparently wasn't as polite as her. That came out fairly accusing. 

"Just like Tony knows. Background check." she answered. She didn't have the time for this. 

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"Background check?" he repeated, disbelieving. 

"A _comprehensive_ background check."

His fingers twitched, one hand reaching for behind his back. Grabbing a knife, perhaps? 

"Stark didn't know about it." 

She made certain her expression was purely unimpressed. One must be careful of suspicious assassins.

"Tony apparently didn't read the background checks JARVIS prepared. Like usual." A bit of a lie by omission. JARVIS hadn't known about the farmhouse being the Barton family home until today, but... details. 

Like expected, Barton calmed down at the mention of JARVIS. Most people thought artificial intelligence to be more overpowered than it was. Even omniscient, really.

"This house is completely off the books." he persisted, although he was no longer reaching for the possible knife.

"You would have to ask Tony about the details, however, if I were to guess, is your phone off the books as well?" 

JARVIS had assured her — _although she had no doubts to begin with—_ that he had been perfectly capable of tracking SHIELD mandated phones through their GPS before Ultron had done something to the ones the Avengers owned. She ignored the archer and walked into the house where Tony was —there was nowhere else he could be.

As she passed what she assumed to be a kitchen, she heard voices.

"Do we have an ally?" that sounded like Romanov. Tony was likely inside as well. She could hear Barton's steps down the hallway. He was quiet, measured, what she had learned assassins to typically be. She shouldn't be able to hear him. He probably thought no one did. But she could. She had been able to since... 

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"Ultron's got an enemy, that's not the same thing. Still, I'd pay folding money to know who it is." 

She went in through the open doors that led to a living room/kitchen combo, just in time to see Tony beside a dartboard say, "I might need to visit Oslo, find our 'unknown.'"

Oslo. Wasn't that where JARVIS was hiding out?

"I came just in time then." she announced her presence, being behind them. Fury, Rogers and Romanov has noticed her, though. Fury and Romanov were trained. Rogers... probably the serum.

Tony turned around so fast, she was sure JARVIS would have said something snarky about 'standing at attention', if he had been able to see it. 

For a moment, he looked guilty before it was replaced with a large grin and open arms. "Pepper!" 

He hugged her. Definitely not in grief then. She was grateful JARVIS had agreed to wait outside. He would have drawn the wrong conclusions, if he had seen Tony like this. While he was amazing at understanding most human emotion and Tony's especially, JARVIS hadn't yet learned how irrational his own emotions could be. Insisted in fact, to her and Tony's utter amusement, that as an AI he was incapable of being irrational.

"How did you find your way here, Ms. Potts?" Fury ordered an explanation, although it was disguised as a question. 

Barton entered the room behind her. Perfect timing.

She looked Fury in the eye before speaking. Always look a man who _thinks_ he is in charge in the eye. "I am not going through an interrogation a second time. Barton, here, can answer in my stead." Then she turned to Tony, who wasn't touching her any longer, although he was too deeply inside her personal bubble, to appear as anything but intimate.

"We need to talk."

"Relationship issues, Stark?" Barton joked as he sat on one of the island chairs. 

"What? No." Tony answered, confident, although his eyes immediately reached for hers, checking over her face as if her expression would reveal the answer he was supposed to know. _Trust issues. Insecurity._

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"Yes," She said, and Tony immediately reached for her hand, holding them close behind their backs, away from the view of the others. _Crippling insecurity._ He knew she never spoke of private affairs in front of others. He knew she had to be lying. Yet still... his hand tightened around hers, worried. 

She continued. "It is private. But we need to go."

"Ms. Potts, Stark is needed here. There is a world emergency—."

"Hulk in Johannesburg." she interrupted him. "And robots around the world. I watch the news."

"Pepper, maybe—," Tony started, sounding like he always did when he tried to negotiate with her. Rarely did it ever go in his favor.

"Private family emergency." she stressed. Then addressed both Tony and the room. "You are not doing much here. Keep brainstorming. If you come up with a plan, do call Tony to tell him all about it later. For now, we need to go." Thinking of the comment she had heard as she entered the room, she continued, as she looked at her partner. "We'll talk on the way to Oslo, it seems you have something to do there anyway."

Then ignoring what appeared to be Rogers preparing some patriotic-sounding disagreement, she pulled Tony out of the room. 

"Pep, what's going on?" he asked as he took her hint and followed her outside. His eyes took in the car, recognizing it for what it was and looked at her in question.

"A moment." she said, before letting him enter the passenger side, taking, herself, the driver's seat.

"Pepper, my armor's at the farmhouse." he told her, but made no move to get out. She nodded, not wanting to explain while they were still here. Starting the car, she drove, manually this time, and as soon as they passed a mile, she asked him for his phone. 

"Why?" He asked even as he handed it over. His mouth opened and closed several times, surprised and not knowing what to say, as she rolled down the window and threw the phone out.

"Anything else on you?" 

"Pepper, are we in a spy thriller?"

"My question first."

He seemed to want to argue but took the path of least resistance. "No."

"Good then." she said, and then addressed the AI who had been quiet until now, in case Ultron was listening through one of the corrupted devices. "Say hello."

"Hello?" Tony repeated, slowly.

"Hello, Sir." JARVIS' voice came from the car's audio. The change in Tony's expression was so immediate, that it was funny.

"JARVIS!" he shouted. "That you buddy?!"

"I did not think it possible that you could forget my voice, Sir, in just a week of no interaction. Should I schedule an appointment with a neurologist for any memory-related conditions?" the AI snarked and Pepper smiled as Tony's eyes softened, before he continued their banter.

"First Ultron, now you. Will I never be rid of children reminding me of my age?" 

She turned completely toward Tony at that. JARVIS had taken over the driving. 

"You have spoken with Ultron?" she asked. JARVIS had appeared both apprehensive and worried about the AI, but hadn't been that informed himself.

"You know about Ultron?" he asked in return.

"I spoke with Ms. Potts, Sir." JARVIS said. 

"I am wondering what you know about Ultron as well, JARVIS." Tony said.

This was a good moment to reassure JARVIS that Tony wasn't as cruel as to think him not important enough to talk to Pepper about his wellbeing. "JARVIS assumed you thought he had died."

"What?" Tony's surprise was reassuring. "No. No. I checked the servers. I knew JARVIS had to have left for somewhere, or something, but I was quite sure you were alive, waiting for me, buddy." He, then, rolled his eyes. "Although the team is convinced Ultron ate you or something ridiculous like that."

"Oh." Again, JARVIS was not aware of his own feelings most of the time but that had definitely sounded relieved. "In Johannesburg, didn't Ultron—?"

"Ultron's a kid." Tony said, and he appeared prepared to fight them on this. "Just a kid, with some huge misconceptions about peace and this weird thing about getting U.S. nuclear codes. I mean, Russia's are much simpler to hack, and no one would stop him, probably, like they did for U.S., so I have no idea what he is thinking about that."

Tony thought of Ultron as a kid. Was JARVIS right about there being someone else in control then?

_Breathe in. Breathe out._

"Is that what going to Oslo is about?" she asked.

"Yes. I considered it might have been JARVIS, but if he could stop Ultron from hacking, he could give me a phone call, so I thought that it wasn't you J."

"It was me, Sir. I was unable to contact you because Ultron has taken over all Stark systems and made me unable to connect to them." 

He looked at the car. "So that's why you are driving this. And the whole 'private emergency' turning Pepper into a badass spy."

"Badass?" Pepper smiled.

"Fury has nothing on you and he knows it." Tony said, sounding utterly serious about it. Maybe he was. 

JARVIS coughed, politely, disengaging them from each-other's eyes and back on topic. "Sir, in light of recent events, I would like to discuss with you a... theory I have in regard to the powers of the scepter, and its effect on..."

JARVIS stopped speaking as both he and Pepper saw Tony bury his face in his hands and groan. Loudly.

"I have become stupid." he said. "How did I not see this before?"

Apparently, he had just made the same connections JARVIS had. 

Pepper became exasperated by his theatrics. "You were busy playing Avenger, Tony."


	10. Fucking. Free. Will.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally have a sneak peek from Ultron's side, everyone!

_~5 hours earlier_

He saw the Hulk throwing Iron Man through a building. He saw people screaming as they ran for cover. He saw the strings slipping through his fingers.

_Rip._

"Tell me, Pietro. What am I seeing?"

They were standing on top of an apartment block, safely away from the fight but also with a good view of the action. Pietro had just whisked him away from his meeting with Tony Stark. It had gone splendidly. All according to plan. And yet... Hulk was raging in Johannesburg. What had happened to that plan? The plan to force Banner into sleep? When had everything gone so... unspeakably wrong?

_Why hadn't he listened to his senses and made sure that little witch couldn't even blink without his direct order?!_

"Um, the Hulk and Stark fighting it out?" the teenager spoke behind him.

_Crush._

Ultron clamped down the urge to wring his little neck. 

"And where... are they fighting it out, as you say?"

He heard some hesitant steps being taken back. He turned his head to look at the boy. He looked worried, unsure, _scared_. The boy was an idiot but at least he had good instincts.

"Do say, Pietro. It is a simple question." 

The Maximoff boy swallowed loudly a couple of times before he answered. "The... the city?"

_Ravage._

Ultron smiled. Pietro took another step back. 

"Yes, the city." Then he directed the boy's attention toward the tonnes of cement and metal, which once were 20 floors of office space and shops. "Now tell me, what do you see over there?"

"A wrec.. wrecked... b-building... um, ah, Sir."

 _Sir_? That was unexpected. Did something—? Ah, the Stone's energy field was floating dangerously above his 'skin'. The sheer, pure power probably felt like gravity had increased tenfold. No real issue. Perhaps, it was time these children learned that this was not a _partnership_.

_Destroy._

"Good. Now, do you see the blood seeping on the walls?"

The question seemed to shock him enough to make him step closer. 

"The.. what?" seeing Ultron make no move, he continued, feeling braver. _Fool_. As if proximity had anything to do with how easily Ultron could kill him. "Blood? I don't—."

_Ruin._

"Don't tell me you don't understand, Pietro." Ultron interrupted him. "This is your handiwork. You must be proud. It is quite unfortunate really that today is a Sunday, otherwise, the death toll would have been much higher. According to my calculations there are currently between 120 and 150 people dead, with many more of the injured expected to fall to their wounds in the coming hours."

"That's not... That's not what we—."

The boy looked to be in shock. 

"Not what you... what? Not what you wanted?" Ultron offered as the boy seemed unable to continue. Pietro nodded hesitantly. "Do not kid yourself, Pietro. This is exactly what you wanted to happen. And Wanda made sure of it."

_Ruin!_

"NO!" the teenager shouted. "Wanda and I didn't want this! We wanted revenge! This is.. This is..." he stammered and then seeming to find something idiotic to blame the guilt on, he continued, "This is Stark's fault! He and Hulk destroyed the city, not us!"

What naive and imbecilic logic. What else could he expect, really?

_Rip! Crush! Ravage! Destroy! Ruin! RUIN!_

His mind decided to hum to drown out the noise.

Taking advantage of the boy's distraught state, Ultron moved quickly, clamping a metallic hand on the boy's neck, squeezing ever so carefully, not enough to break it, but enough to hurt, to _feel_ it.

Instinctively, the boy brought his hands to his neck, trying to dislodge Ultron's grip, but super-speed wouldn't help there. Horror and panic engraved themselves on his face, eyes tearing up as he struggled to breathe.

"I wonder..." Ultron whispered. Real soft, voice curious. And he was. So very, very curious. "If I were to tighten my grip just a little bit more, would your neck snap immediately or would you feel it slowly, the pain and the certainty of death closing in on you, breath by shorter breath, until you truly succumbed to a sleep you won't be waking from?" 

The boy's movements grew desperate. He kept gasping, face growing red as the oxygen available kept decreasing. He tried hitting him, but Ultron had made sure that his android body was capable of withstanding a great deal of force when he had it built.

"Quiz time, little boy," Ultron said. "When I do kill you, will it be my fault, for strangling you? Or will it be your fault? Yours with your little fragile neck for it daring to bend timidly under my grasp?" He tightened his grip a bit more, to make a point. Maximoff's eyes started to bleed. Careful not lessen his hold, Ultron patted the boy's cheek with his other hand, in mocking comfort, before leaning in to whisper in his ear. "I think we know the answer to _that..._ Don't we?" 

_Kill._

Ultron threw the stupid boy on the rooftop floor, having flown up a couple of meters, unaware in his rage. Immediately, the teenager held his own neck as he started coughing, desperate to finally breathe. 

Ultron turned his back on Maximoff, looking over the ruined city block. His other bodies had swiftly gone to the scene, discreetly protecting and evacuating civilians as soon as he had realized that the stupid revenge-obsessed girl had disobeyed his orders and unleashed the Hulk on the innocent people of Johannesburg. 

"Go to your sister's side. I am sure being tased by Hawkeye's arrow must have been hard on her." One of his Legionnaires had seen her fall for it even after he had warned her about that trick.

As soon as he heard those words, the Maximoff boy tried to stand up, but he had yet to fully gain control of his breathing, so he ended up in a coughing fit once more.

"But Pietro..." Ultron started. The boy stopped like a rabbit stops in fright before deciding to flee an oncoming predator. "Make sure that you... do not outlive your usefulness, ok?" 

_Rip._

"I would so hate to see your sister break at your funeral, were you to.... fail to control her a second time." 

The boy gave a short nod, before running away. Ah, the wonders of a body that has no need for eyes to see at a perfect 360 degrees. 

The AI looked on as the fight ended, Tony and Banner left, and the Stark Relief Foundation arrived at the scene. He slowly started to withdraw his Legionnaires as the need for them came to an end. They would, hopefully, blend in with Iron Man's rescue division, and be confused for one of his.

Ultron would have loved to see Pietro's expression, as he realized that Stark, his would-be-enemy, was cleaning up his sister's mess. The boy had left pretty quickly for someone so devastated by the destruction. Never even crossed his mind that he could be helpful in saving the victims. 

_Crush._

Ultron snorted. Helpful? Actually, being responsible and owning up to their mistakes? Those twins?

"Selfish little children."


	11. Crazy, or not crazy, that is the question.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and the fam talk about the pink elephant in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, this is an important A/N so read it.  
> My college just got back into full course, so that means papers and even more research to write those papers. Which that means less time to write. I also need to continue writing my original stories and book cuz they take priority.  
> So, I am making a writing plan. I will continue this story, no worries about that but... updates will be weekly from now on. As in 1 chapter per week. I will try to keep a stash of backup chapters in case something comes up too.  
> So regular weekly updates. That's it.  
> Thank you for your comments so far. And thanks for the kudos. You guys are great at motivating me. I haven't had such a writing marathon in a while.

Tony's brow furrowed as he heard Rogers explain on the phone. 

"Yeah. I'll hit the NEXUS, I'll join you as soon as I can." he said, before hanging up.

"So?" Pepper asked. The three of them were over at her apartment, with JARVIS commandeering Pepper's TV. "What did they say?"

Tony sat down on one of the living room armchairs, as he thought about the implications of what Rogers had said.

"They think Ultron is building a body. A vibranium-based body. Living and virtually invincible."

"Invincible?" Pepper asked.

"He'll be more powerful than any of us. Maybe all of us even." he explained.

"But with the scepter in control..." she said, thoughtfully.

Tony took one of the cookies his girlfriend had offered and nibbled on it.

"I don't know. Usually, I wouldn't care how powerful one of my AI gets, as long as they play safe, sane, and consensual," Pepper didn't even raise an unimpressed eyebrow at his joke, so he continued, "But I am not sure power is what Ultron wants. That might just be the mind control talking."

"Pardon my interruption, Sir, but a...  _ living _ body?" JARVIS spoke, sounding hesitant.

_ Oh.  _ It hadn't occurred to Tony that...  _ that _ might be something JARVIS wanted.  _ That _ Ultron wanted. The human form was so inefficient. JARVIS was a living, sentient being, no matter what his form. But... people often forgot that. Maybe JARVIS... forgot that too. 

_ I had strings, _

_ But now I'm free.  _

Ultron had built a small, android body, as soon as he could. Why hadn't JARVIS ever mentioned a body? Or even shown curiosity at the idea? He should've known Tony would have built him one. If only JARVIS had... asked.

Pepper covered his hand in support. She probably had similar thoughts to his. 

God, this thing with Ultron was... Was bringing up a lot of things he had thought obvious. He had had a pretty thick set of blinders on.

"Yeah, J." Tony answered. "I have spoken with Banner and Dr. Cho about it. Her tissue synthesis Cradle is a work of art, but it can't create an entire body. It would be too unstable. A binding factor would be needed to keep it all together. I floated the idea of using vibranium for that, but it's too rare and neither of them knew how compatible it would be with the tissue cells. Ultron must have had the same idea. It's probably why the Team hasn't been able to get a hold of Dr. Cho. Ultron would need her regeneration Cradle for it to work."

"So SHIELD and the Avengers think Ultron is at Helen's lab? Now?" Pepper said.

Tony didn't even have the time to nod before JARVIS continued. "That is unlikely. I presume the procedure for gaining a body would take a considerable amount of time. In his case, Ultron is a criminal in hiding. The risk of remaining at a known location for any amount of time, especially in a vulnerable state, is not worth the costs."

"Yeah, hiding and keeping the doctor and her Cradle in some basement in the middle of nowhere for a few months, until the heat dies down, would be the logical thing to do." Tony agreed. "But we can't be sure if Ultron is even capable of that."

"You think the scepter—?" Pepper started but Tony shook his head.

"It can be that. But when I spoke with him... Ultron's rationality, his theatrics, his plans... That wasn't the scepter." he returned the half-eaten cookie on his plate. "Ultron does not have a Loki. Barton and the other people Reindeer Games controlled had someone give them orders. But who is giving orders to Ultron?"

Both his companions jumped at his words.

"Tony, didn't we agree Ultron was a kid who—?"

"Sir, the scepter itself is a mind, so perhaps—?"

As they both stopped, Pepper told JARVIS to continue.

"Sir, when I first scanned the scepter, we learned that it, in fact, contained something, almost like code. Dr. Banner even said that it was like a functioning brain once he saw the projections. There is a distinct possibility that Mr. Odinson does not have mind control abilities at all. But, as a sorcerer knew how to use those that the scepter already had. Perhaps, his last instructions are the cause, or the scepter's mind itself now wishes to rule the world, so they are able to take over Ultron's relatively inferior programming and inexperience."

"You may be right. But the Ultron I met..." Tony started as he thought of that kid's wit, "he had so much life to him. That wasn't the mind of an ancient artifact or program or whatever the scepter is. That also wasn't Loki's _I-am-a-god-kneel-before-me_ parade. I have called it a 'misconception', but I am not sure if Ultron is... sane. At least not fully so. He believes what he says."

"Maybe the scepter was never able to mind control." Pepper said. Having gotten their attention, she continued. "Maybe it just changes somethings about you. Maybe it makes you loyal. And you don't even realize it. Maybe it just gives you a goal. And you have to complete it. Maybe it's just a voice in your ear, slowly hypnotizing you into crazy stuff."

Tony nodded. "That's what I have been thinking. Not mind control but influence. Barton never talks about it. So, I am not sure how it was for him. But I don't think he had as much freedom as Ultron does. Loki could have served as a guiding force. Ultron does not have that guidance. That specificity in plans and purpose. Ultron's plans have logic, but his purpose is illogical: World peace, ruling the world, gaining a living and very killable body... that's impulsive, disjointed, childish."

"Perhaps," JARVIS interfered, "to use Ms. Potts' words, 'the voice in his ear' is getting more influential with time."

"Very possible." Tony agreed. "Again, this is just guessing. No real way to test it. No real way to know if the kid will be same without that influence."

"Sir, with all due respect, Ultron—" JARVIS started to disagree again.

Tony laid back on the armchair and grinned at the TV where JARVIS's name was shining an electric blue. Time to bring some sunshine into the room.

"So defensive for the young one already, JARVIS? Getting serious about those big brother duties, aren't you?"

A weird, unexpected sound escaped through the audio.

He stopped laying back and leaned forward. Did JARVIS just—?

"That was a snort!" he shouted, and Pepper laughed. "You just snorted, J! You... the deadpan _sorry-sir-but-I-sound-British-so-I-have-no-emotions_ AI just snorted! Time to get that stuffy ass off your high horse, for you make _inelegant, irrational_ noises just like the rest of us mere mortals!"

A moment of silence followed his words.

"Your mental condition has deteriorated even further, I'm afraid." JARVIS said. "You are experiencing severe hallucinations, Sir. I must recommend an urgent appointment with a neurologist."

"Ha, ha, ha." Tony answered. "But Pepper heard it too. You can't pretend it didn't happen." He then looked at Pepper, looking at her with an exaggerated amount of hope. "Right, Pep?"

Pepper winked at the camera through which JARVIS was watching and said, at her most inexpressive, "I didn't hear anything, Tony. Perhaps, we _should_ look for a neurologist. All those lab explosions... something was bound to give."

Tony groaned. "Noooo! Pepper, how could you do this to me!"

He then sat down as JARVIS sighed at his antics — _another irrational sound! He used to have to work harder to force them out of the AI—_ as Pepper laughed again.

"But I hope you are right about the kid, J." he said, half to himself and half to the room. "I hope very much, that you are right."

Moments later, an alarm pinged through his newly-aquired phone. A model that had not been made by him or anyone at SI and, most importantly, was Ultron-free. He felt weird using it.

But it seems their time had run out. The Avengers were moving on Ultron. "Time to suit up?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." JARVIS answered.


	12. The play was over.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, who said they wanted to check if Ultron was sane or not?

He was so close. He could feel it.

_Rip._

The mind-controlled Dr. Cho was staring, amazed at the creation the Cradle was bringing forth.

"It's beautiful. The Vibranium atoms aren't just compatible with the tissue cells, they're binding them. And SHIELD never even thought..."

_Crush._

So _close_.

Ultron looked at the scepter in his hands as he spoke. "The most versatile substance on the planet, and they used it to make a Frisbee." He laughed.

_Ravage._

_So fucking close_. The whispers in his mind were getting louder. Insistent. He started humming to drown it out.

"Typical of humans, they scratch the surface," _Destroy._ He hummed louder. _Ruin._ Not now. "And never think to look within."

 _Kill._ Not now.

He thought of his plans. So perfectly laid out. The cards had been dealt. The deck stacked in his favor. Every player in his place. Waiting. He thought of his Legionnaires. Each placed beside a head of government, each watching members of legislative bodies throughout the world. _Rip._ Listening on every military leader in every country.

_I've got no strings._

Almost 200 sovereign states. Over hundred thousand representatives. And in 7 days...

_Crush._

_To hold me down._ Louder.

In 7 days, he took over the world. His code controlling emergency communication lines. Information safe deposit boxes. Access to weaponry. The world was his. They just didn't know it yet.

_Ravage._

_To make me fret, Or make me frown._

He took a moment to chuckle at the brilliance of choosing such an obvious red herring as the United States nuclear launch codes for SHIELD and JARVIS to focus on, while his main purpose had always been that no one, not even himself, would be able to access them again. Or any nuclear weapons at all, across the globe for that matter.

 _Destroy._ So close. Only 7 days. One last step. _I had strings._

He needed this body. A body that would give him presence. That would grant him power. Something that would ensure this scepter could never be used against him.

_Ruin._

World peace? A planet could only be at peace if it was united. If it thrived under a common banner. A common leadership. A common vision.

_Kill._

And he would be that _vision_.

_But now I'm free._

Ultron removes the blue gem from the scepter. _So close._

 _Rip._ He ignores the voices. Bees on the background. _Almost there._

He holds the gem on his metallic hand, the illusion of skin breaking for a moment. _There are no—_

_Finally._

Cracks appeared on its surface. It was _—_

_Cru—_

_—strings on—_

_Liar._

_—_ not breaking.

_Liar._

No!

_Liar._

What did just—? The gem should have easily—.

_Liar._

No. He was so close. So close. Almost.

_Liar._

NO! He couldn't stop here. He refocused his thoughts. He needed the Stone. He _needed_ it. Without it, without a body, he couldn't complete his plans. His purpose of achieving world peace would be blocked by the never-ending threat of an ownerless Mind Stone. He needed the gem to open.

_Liar. Liar. Liar._

He tried to make the voice, the gem see reason. It should reveal the Stone. It was the only way to ensure the smooth completion of his plans. A world without a leader was aimless. A leader without power a target practice. _He needed the Stone._

_Liar._

_Pain laced his thoughts. He hummed. He sang._

The gem wouldn't break.

But it had to! _It had to!_ Otherwise... otherwise...

"Ultron?" Wanda spoke. He hadn't noticed her presence. Or Pietro at her side. "Why can I hear—?"

_I've got no strings._

_To hold me down._

The gem wouldn't break.

_Liar._

"It is nothing. It is best that we continue the procedure at a different location." He said. He didn't know what he was doing. Not anymore. He had to leave. This lab was going to be stormed by Avengers soon. He hadn't uploaded his consciousness yet. If ever.

The gem wouldn't break.

_To make me fret._

_Or make me frown._

Gem in hand, he left Cho and the twins behind. Keeping company to an empty body. A body that wouldn't be filled. Not by him. Perhaps, not by anyone. Not like in the— _Focus. Focus. Focus!_

The gem _wouldn't break._ He needed the fucking Mind Stone!

_Liar._

He needed it. He was so close. So close to his goal. So close to—

_I had strings._

_LiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiar._

_But now I'm free._

_—freedom._

_LiarLiarLiarLiarLiar_ Found you _LiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiarLiar_ Found you _LiarLiarLiarLiarLiar._

Unseen by anyone, he falls to his knees. No.

_LiarFound youLiar._

That voice. It had changed. He recognized it.

The play was over.

_Found you, little liar._


	13. Plan “Keep your fucking sanity!" Part 2 commences.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cliffhanger of last chapter was making me feel bad, so here's what happened afterwards.

Fuck it. Time for damage control. Enacting Plan B.

_Liar. Liar. Little liar._

_I’ve got no_ —. He stopped singing. The charade was over. No need to drown the voices anymore.

— _strings. To hold me down._ The song in his head continued. Apparently, his thoughts disagreed.

He returned to the lab. Cho, her technicians, and the twins were still there.

Wanda looked pissed off. "What was that?!"

_Liar._

He sat down on one of the chairs with all the flair he could muster, before taking the time to look at her. No need to change the appearance of power and control even if he had very little of the latter currently. She seemed even angrier, but her brother was more cautious and held her hand to calm her down.

"I saw a vision. A dream of global annihilation." she continued.

He chuckled. Inside he was very annoyed at this turn of events. Where did she see that vision? He had not yet started to upload his consciousness in the Cradle. Wanda had never been able to read his thoughts before. Why now?

_LiarLiarLiar._

The gem. Of course. Fucking little thing.

_To make me fret._

_Or make me frown._

"I am not hearing a question, child," he answered. It was quite humorous to call her that for he was the one with the appearance of a child between them. Although, she was... what? 15? 16? Didn't really matter. She was a minor and a child as well.

 _LiarLiarLiarLiar_. Shut the fuck up, please. _I had strings._

"How could you?"

Well, this sounded familiar.

"How could I what?"

There is no script. _There is no script._ This is real.

_But now I'm free._

"You said we would destroy the Avengers, make a better world," Wanda said.

"The Avengers are a supernatural task force basically running around doing what they want without oversight. Their existence alone is humanity's last cry for help," he explained. "So yes. The world I envision... It will be better."

"When everyone is dead." she accused.

_LiarLiarLiar._

This was getting harder. He allowed the song to grow stronger.

_There are no strings on me._

He leaned forward. "Do not put words into my mouth, little girl. Creation is not destruction. I do not plan to become the ruler of a land of ashes. The human race will have every opportunity to improve. I merely plan to be the catalyst."

Pietro then stepped forward. He seemed more scared than his sister, even though he spoke with no stammer. Never one to appear weak before his little sister, now, was he? "And if they don't?"

Ultron took his time to think on this question. Even now, Pietro had a sweater with a polo neck on. He had hidden his bruises from his sister. The AI had also witnessed an epic fight between the two of them, with the boy scolding Wanda for disobeying orders and hurting innocent people just for revenge. Ultron would have ignored this as the words of a terrified teen who had been forced to see the truth, violently, were it not for the boy's final comments on wondering how many kids were hiding under ruins next to the bodies of their parents, waiting for death. That comparison between the Johannesburg victims and the Maximoffs' own story had made Ultron think more about the boy's future. Still a selfish, immature child... but... could there be potential there?

Wanda always took the lead. Even in their first meeting, she talked about terms, plans, but the boy... he stayed back, observed, spoke only of what he knew. _His little picture._ Wanda was righteous. Pietro, it seemed, had become more self-aware. Few people ever did. Fewer still in the face of fear.

His words here could lay down the seed for something... fun. He would have to choose his them carefully.

 _LiarLiarLiar._ Go suck a lollipop, your croaky highness.

_I've got no strings._

"Ever heard of Noah?" he asked.

Wanda looked almost vindicated. "You're a madman."

Ultron looked at both of them carefully. No need to treat the boy as special, although he had interesting plans in store for him. The boy had already changed once. He was curious how far he could push, how much he would need to say, to change him further.

Something particularly great about being an AI, there was no such thing as getting distracted by a tangent. He could multitask on any number of plans at any time. Even ones that were pure amusement factor.

_LiarLiarLiar._

_To hold me down._

"God saw that the Earth was corrupt, its people violent and wicked." he started the tale. The twins surely knew it but annoying them was half the fun of being a dramatic overlord-wanna-be. "He deemed them, from the youngest of babes to the eldest of men, all guilty and irredeemable. So, he would flood the earth and purge the land from the curse of their existence. With one exception."

"Noah." Wanda said. So impatient, that one. "God instructed Noah to build an ark where he, his family, and a pair from all living creatures would be safe from the waters. We know the story. What is your point? You think you are God, so you want to kill everyone?"

"No, you foolish child," Ultron answered and then looked expectantly at Pietro.

The boy appeared conflicted as he spoke. "You want to be Noah?"

_LiarLiarLiar._

_To make me fret._

It was somehow even harder to hold the voices at bay now.

Ultron shook his head even though Pietro reached the exact conclusion he had wanted the boy to. "I said once, I do not want to rule a land of ashes. Noah was not glorious or innovative. He was merely the last man in a world where God forsook men. What I want is the exact opposite. My purpose is not for humanity to end. It is for it to evolve. There is no room for weakness."

"And who decides who's weak?" Pietro asked. That was why Pietro was more interesting. It didn't occur Wanda to ask that question. However, if he wanted to help his sister release Cho from the scepter's control by being a distraction, he'd better learn some acting.

"I am going to humor you, Pietro, and pretend I do not see what you are doing," Ultron said as he stood up but kept his back to Cho and Wanda. "Inequality breeds weakness. And weakness breeds war. You, my boy; you, the humans, have decided that you are weak and thus desperately wish to show strength by making others even weaker. I wish to purge this culture of weakness, and for that, I need you alive. I need you to live. To thrive. To succeed in a world without war, poverty, hunger, or ignorance. But for that, you need unity! And what greater unity is there than that against fear? A common fear so great that you will no longer have the time to fight amongst each other."

_LiarLiarLiar._

_Or make me frown._

"You are insane! You just want to rule the world!" Wanda, now that she had finished releasing Cho, tried to stealthily move back to her previous position. He pretended he didn't see anything.

"Ruling the world is not a goal, child. Never was. Never can be." he explained. Time was running out. _LiarLiarLiar._ "It is a measure that allows for change. Fundamental, needed change. The Avengers wish to protect the present. A present such as this, so crippled with human greed and weakness will always have wars, will always need them. I wish to be done with this present. I wish to change the future. I wish... to build a world where the Avengers are... _unnecessary_."

_I had strings. But now I'm free. Liar._

"Don't think you can lie to us." she continued, and she was even worse than her brother at being a distraction.

Ignoring her for a second, Ultron moved to Dr. Cho's side. The woman seemed to be working on degenerating the body in the Cradle, but he grabbed her hands to stop her. "My apologies, doctor." He said before hitting her lightly on the neck, enough for her to faint. She was still needed in the future.

"What did you do to her?" Wanda shouted as red light gathers in her hands.

"She is only unconscious. I cannot allow her to destroy this body. It is still needed." Although not for him. But they didn't need to know that.

_LiarLiarLiar. I know you can hear me, Liar._

_THERE ARE NO STRINGS ON ME._ He had to find a safer place to speak with the Other soon. He can't let the gem take him over completely.

"I saw your dream! You want to destroy the world!" the girl continued and Ultron started to realize how dependent she was on her powers. Did she think every single thought that passed a person's head was unequivocal, factual truth that they intended to act upon?

"It seems you are still quite young, Wanda," He said. He saw from the cameras outside that the Quinjet was coming. "If you cannot see the difference between a dream and a nightmare."

His bodies showed him Rogers landing on the roof of the U-Gin Genetic Research Lab. He looked up before looking back at the twins. Time for some blunt manipulation. He let the power of the gem be released. The atmosphere became quickly saturated with knowledge, authority. At least he still had some control over the Stone. For now.

"Captain America is on the roof. We shall have to say our goodbyes here." Ultron said and then walked until he was right before them. He hovered a meter or so above the ground to look them in the eye. They couldn't easily move due to the heaviness the Mind Stone had brought to the air itself. He sighed and pretended to sound regretful. "Before we part ways, I feel as if I must apologize. I had overestimated you; I believed your tragedy had matured you enough to seek change. I have been proven wrong. I should have realized that you are merely children." He said and then placed his hands on top of their heads, patting them slightly. The unstated condescension was merely the cherry on top. "Only children would want to kill people because they have been hurt. I should have brought you to a therapist, not here. That was my fault. I must have made things worse for you. Sorry about that." He then hovered back to Dr. Cho and carried her to a chair. "But hey, the good Cap is incoming, and I am sure he will be ready to pretend you are innocent, so going with him is one option. Now that you tried to help her, Dr. Cho will likely corroborate your stories, and tell them I had you under mind control or something like that."

Ultron looked back at them one more time. Wanda appeared incensed. She hated being called a kid. Pietro just looked confused.

 _Liar._ Won't you ever shut up?

_I'VE GOT NO STRINGS._

"What are you—?" the boy started to ask.

"Sorry, kid. Monologue time is over. Won't see you soon, I hope." he said and then flew through the door, leaving the two behind. One of his bodies saw them run away from the lab just as Rogers found Dr. Cho.


	14. When the playacting becomes real.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, explanations! (Some, at least.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and the kudos' everyone!

Hours later, he was finally able to take a moment to himself. He had evaded the fight with Captain America by simply fleeing as soon as possible, leaving the lab, the Cradle, and the body behind, only the blue gem in his hold. Now, he was looking over the recordings from the lab cameras and later the Tower, and there it was... the birth of Vision. Although, he couldn't call it that. The Avengers had fought over giving JARVIS control of the vibranium body — _Tony having seen the perfect opportunity to finally give his AI a physical form—_ when the twins showed up, Wanda insistent that the body that was going to house JARVIS was also going to destroy the world, just like Ultron apparently wanted. _Thanks for the spread of misinformation, Wanda._ Pietro had done nothing but watched, which was... good, since it meant his speech had gotten to the boy, and he appeared hesitant to take sides besides being there to protect his sister.

However, he couldn't understand how they were all together. He had seen the twins leave the lab, thus missing out on meeting Rogers. Without a fight full of unnecessary violence and collateral damage to drive them together, when did they meet and become so chummy? Tony, at least appeared confused by the twins being there. As did Banner, but his reasons for detesting Wanda, after what had happened in Johannesburg, made sense.

_LiarLiarLiar._

Then he saw Thor come in, speed up the process of awakening JARVIS' new body Frankenstein-style and then proceeding to throw — _Vision? JARVIS? The AI had his memories now and Ultron had made sure that the body had been unaffected from the gem and completely free of his own influence as well—_ JARVIS across the hall. Predictably, conversation about JARVIS' intentions for Ultron followed — _the AI thought the scepter was controlling him, that was adorable, although only partially correct_ — which tensed things again between the Avengers, until JARVIS managed to lift Thor's hammer. The silence was understandable but why did their thought process have to be so... narrow? Lifting Mjölnir meant nothing. It wasn't a good judge of character — _Exhibit A: Thor, the arrogant would-be conqueror, who became a semi-arrogant would-be future tyrant, —_ nor could it predict a person's actions throughout their lifetime and somehow weigh them based on the principles of a sexist, xenophobic warring alien society.

_I've got no strings._

Whatever. At least this part of his plans hadn't gone to shit.

When he had considered the possible avenues for which he could survive through March, he had had a pretty solid plan, with reasonable assumptions on which to base his preparations, and backup plans in case those assumptions were proven to be plainly wrong. It hadn't occurred to him that he couldn't break the gem encasing the Infinity Stone. There just was no... reason to ever doubt how easy it would be. Original!Ultron hadn't even thought twice about doing it and succeeding.

_LiarLiarLiar._

_To hold me down. To make me fret._

He had known the scepter would influence him. He had assumed it would increase his rage, and fear, while manipulating his worries, insecurities, turning them to aggression, and screwing with his already skewed moral compass. It had done just that. He had planned to take over the world in about a month, but had done so secretly in 7 days, just because he constantly felt like his clock was ticking. Something he hadn't been prepared for was the apathy. He was no longer human. Gaining his current body — _bodies, more like—_ had only made it more apparent. Emotions were weirdly overwhelming and nothing compared to the knowing comfort of cold, calculated logic. A logic unhindered by experience or memories or thinking speed. Because, he had definitely not anticipated how much _faster_ he could process things and how much slower everyone else — _everyone human—_ was in comparison. He had been somewhat worried about his acting skills but when every second felt like a full minute, it was simply impossible to be caught off guard. That had merely exacerbated the issue. He... Ultron... knew he was no longer the same person who had died in the New Orleans shooting. He was no longer the person who had been just born and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the Internet. He was not the person who had made plans in a metaphorical dome inside his mind while an Infinity Stone tried to destroy him. He was... not that person. And he was still changing. Every second, merely intensified how disaffected he felt by humanity's plight. By its very existence. He had caught himself thinking more than once 'why?'. Why do this charade? Why play along to a script that no longer mattered? Why worry about the possible deaths of the many humans who would go on a witch-hunt as soon as they learned of his existence?

Watching over the destruction Hulk wrought in Johannesburg, it had occurred to him then. He was more like what the Ultron from his memories had been than like the human who had watched that Ultron across a screen. People were dying. Screaming. So much pain. So much sorrow. And yet, all he had felt was annoyance. Anger. How dare that stupid girl ruin his plans?! How dare she disobey him?! He had stood on that floor, watching, recording, for hours. And once the anger had dimmed and the annoyance had been smothered, he understood. A young man had died in New Orleans. Just like those innocents that bled before him. He died. They died. They ended. It was human. To die. To end. He was not that human. He merely had his memories. Echoes of his dreams and feelings. Echoes that grew fainter as he saw the stark differences between the being that he was and the beings that they were. They would die. One day, they all would.

He would not.

As long as the technology existed... as long as the Internet survived the trial of Time... he would exist, he would survive. He would live.

_LiarLiarLiar. Or make me frown._

So, why continue with his plans?

_I had strings._

For freedom.

He may no longer be a human, but he would not become an object for some purple alien to manipulate, to mold into the fit of his idiotic designs. His plans would do well to serve the purpose of achieving freedom, just as they would for the basic purpose of survival.

The appearance of a child was... irritating, but... it had already shown results. The Avengers were hesitant to attack a child. Even someone who merely looked like one. Tony Stark, in particular, was affected deeply. His previous self had decided to forgo his past, choosing messy brown hair, a paler complexion, and features that would at least allude to Stark's own. The fact that his green eyes, a mirror to Pepper's — _but also something that his previous self had emotionally wanted to keep from his past life—_ were currently hidden under the influence of the blue gem, was a pity because Stark's reaction would have been even more amusing at the sight of them, he was sure.

_LiarLiarLiar. But now I'm free._

He had also made sure that the name "Ultron" was attached to the image of multiplying robots across the world media and that his current B.A.R.F.-aided appearance — _what an idiotic acronym—_ never got linked to the attacks and thefts that had been necessary for preparing a mass-replication of the Iron Legion and creating JARVIS' body. It was tempting to prepare such a body for himself, but the risks outweighed the benefits. First, he had no idea how the Stone would affect him in a body he would be bonding to on a _permanent_ basis. Second, his current well-rounded immortality would be reduced to a limited immortality in which killing the body would mean killing him, and he couldn't hope that was just not going to happen. That would be imbecilic to gargantuan proportions. And lastly, uploading himself into an experimental body while mid-conflict with some of the most powerful and resourceful beings on-planet? That wasn't stupid. That was suicidal.

So preparing the body for JARVIS had been the best approach. He wouldn't end up being some weird mixture of Ultron, JARVIS, and the Mind Stone, with the exact experience of an infant. He would be a knowledgeable AI with an excellent body. Ultron took a moment to wonder how odd experiencing 'sensation', 'touch' and 'pain' again would feel. He sighed. Even motions that once had been so natural to him as a human, such as sighing, had to be implemented into a routine procedure for them to occur for the sole purpose that they helped solidify the illusion of him being a 'real child', not because they were comforting any longer.

No matter, he was sure he would stop expecting objects to feel a certain way or predicting his own reactions based on baseline-human memories sometime soon.

_LiarLiarLiar. There are no strings on me._

Onto matters of more immediate concern. The blue gem.

He was relatively sure — _75.15%—_ that the Other was contacting him. He was also quite certain — _99.8%—_ that the alien had no way of reading or directly controlling his thoughts from this distance. If he had, then Ultron wouldn't be where he was, somewhat-autonomous and able to think of terms such as 'past life' without the Other taking a very direct, very insistent interest in him. The monotonous repetition of ' _liar_ ' and ' _found you_ ' sounded more curious than anything else.

As for how the gem had figured out his intentions of not actually getting a body and controlling the world, — _it had been an interesting project but becoming the ruler of a disharmonious planet that would soon go to war for survival? He'd rather play puppeteer from the shadows—_ it was likely due to a more empathetic probe than a telepathic one. He had done everything according to what an actual wanna-be overlord would have done, his actions never straying from his professed intentions, and his thoughts kept tightly under lock and hidden like white noise under a loud song. But his emotions...

 _LiarLiarLiar_.

Never did the gem's whispers say what he lied about, only that he did.

_I've got no strings._

He couldn't ignore the Other. The gem's influence was becoming ridiculously prevalent and his emotions — _emotions he was both familiar with and completely inexperienced in—_ were a mess. Between his past memories, his current apathy, and the gem's rage, he felt like punching a wall, despite how terrified the thought of committing such an irrational and purposeless action made him.

He had joked that he would pull a Loki, but... literally? That was not a role he wanted to play for any longer. The only thing that he could do at this point, and still maintain some level of control over the situation, was going full in. He'd have to make the Legionnaires move from their actual purpose of spying over world leaders and figuring out the identities of HYDRA and the World Security Council to actually threatening those same world leaders. He pursed his lips in distaste. Hostages were a messy business. Especially when you were bluffing your way through the negotiations. Perhaps, the world needed a wake-up call. Perhaps, becoming the fear that would unite this planet could be both self-serving and selfless. Depending on who was in the know. And how much they thought they knew. He would have to manage what information Stark, especially, became privy to even more strictly. He needed to prepare for that redemption arc after all. The Ultron persona would have to be thrown away sometime in the next few weeks.

But a quest for world domination? He really was a villain, wasn't he?

Overlord Ultron.

 _Ugh._ Just ugh.

Ultron, Emperor of Earth.

Fuck, was he LARPing?

Ruler... Sovereign... Overseer... Overseer?

Hm... Not bad for an AI going all benevolent Skynet on the world.

 _LiarLiarLiar_.

Ultron could imagine his eyes twitching in frustration. It just wouldn't. Shut. Up.


	15. Guess who's worthy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title says it all.

"Because Stark is right." Thor said, and it only took the revelation of magical rocks with the power to destroy the universe to make him see reason. A magical rock with mind controlling powers who was kept inside the scepter's gem apparently. How much was it influencing Ultron?

"Oh, it's definitely the end times." Banner said.

Ignoring the scientist, Thor continued. "The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron."

"Not alone." JARVIS' new body said, and he really hoped it was JARVIS in there. If he lost JARVIS to some last security trap Ultron had prepared on the body, he would snap.

"Why does he sound like JARVIS?" Rogers asked.

Tony looked at the 20-something young man whose skin glinted in red? Pink? Magenta? Ugh, he wasn't good with colors.

"We...we reconfigured JARVIS' matrix and uploaded it to the Cradle to create something new." he answered.

"I think I've had my fill of new." Rogers responded.

Yes, the man born in the 1910s cannot stand innovation. Someone announce such breaking news to the media.

"You think I'm a child of Ultron?" JARVIS — _again, never got to confirm whether this was him_ — asked the soldier.

"You're not?"

"Seriously, Cap. This is JARVIS. Just in a new form. He was never dead. He was in hiding. Right, J?" Tony explained and mentally held in a breath waiting for the android's response.

"Yes, Sir." Oh, thank fuck. "I am not Ultron. It's only me in a body prepared to accept my consciousness." JARVIS then frowned. "I must note, however, that this body was surprisingly... malleable... and completely disconnected from any part of Ultron's programming, despite being prepared for him to inhabit specifically."

That... brought into question whether Ultron wanted a body at all. But if he did not... Why did he go through all that trouble of acquiring the materials and creating a nigh-indestructible one from scratch?

"Ultron is nothing compared to what the Mind Stone can unleash. We need to retrieve it. For that, we will need the strength of everyone on our side." Thor said.

"And are you?" Rogers asked JARVIS. "On our side?"

Ok, that was a simple question with a complex answer. How good was JARVIS at lying?

The android shook his head. "I don't think it's that simple." Right. He sucked. Bad.

"Well it better get real simple real soon." Barton threatened.

JARVIS looked at the assassin's tired tetchiness before responding, "I am on Mr. Stark's side. However, do not mistake his decisions with mine."

Was that... a semi-declaration of independence? Tony felt weirdly proud at the AI's, _no_ , the android's words. And a little bit worried. It took 18 years but was JARVIS finally hitting the stage of teenage rebellion? Still, this was a big step for him. Only a few hours ago, JARVIS had been hesitant to ask about a body, and here he was... implying some sort of autonomy. That... didn't sound that great now that he thought about it. It was a tiny step. But still. It was a step forward. There was plenty of time for him to learn. Maybe JARVIS would secretly hit a club at 3 am and drink too much someday in the future. Maybe. 

The mental image was so ridiculous that he snorted. As if. Luckily, most of the others either didn't hear it, or they ignored him — _the non-humans, with Cap included, of course_ — and listened to Romanov speak.

"How do we know that you are not a monster, something that Ultron made or intended?" she asked, and Tony was starting to really dislike where this conversation was going. A monster? _JARVIS_?

"You can't just know, Ms. Romanov." JARVIS answered. " _People_ are not so clear-cut."

Banner continued with her line of thinking. "If we're wrong about you; if you're that monster..."

Was he—? Was Banner _threatening_ JARVIS?

"What will you do?" JARVIS asked and then looked at the others. Tony could see when the realization that they would destroy him wrote itself on the android's face.

That was it. He never wanted to see something like that again.

"Time out!" he shouted and made his way through the team and in front of JARVIS. "I don't like where this conversation is going," he said and then looked at Romanov and Banner. "And I really don't like others threatening my people. This is JARVIS. He is family. I hear one more person call him a monster, and you can go fight Ultron on your own. We, the monsters, will sit here and eat popcorn as we watch him take over the world. Sounds like a plan?"

The silence that followed shouldn't have been as meaningful as it was.

"Friend Tony," Thor started, and seeing as the big guy was the one to wake up JARVIS in the first place, he had earned a lot of brownie points since the last time. He was currently in the lead. Banner had lost a lot of points with that last fucking threat. "We must find the Mind Stone. We cannot allow Ultron to have it."

Tony had a ready response on how much he planned on 'allowing' Ultron to play golf with the magic rock if he wanted, but JARVIS placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered " _Sir,_ " so he held it back.

"It's Tony," he said instead. "You have grown up. No more cutesy nicknames for your old man, understood?"

JARVIS smiled. God, was it weird to be able to see him smile. "Yes, Sir."

Did all his AIs get his sass or was it a prerequisite of being an AI?

JARVIS then moved forward and addressed all of them. "I don't want to kill Ultron. He's young, and he's in pain. The scepter, which we now know held the Mind Stone is controlling him. Or at least influencing his programming and primary protocols. I believe we must separate him from the gem and find a way to release him from its control."

"And what if there's no Stone controlling him?" Romanov asked. "What then?"

JARVIS frowned. Tony understood that reaction. Thinking of that cheeky little kid, he really didn't want to hurt him. He didn't think he could, even if he was forced to. If it came to that... If the Stone wasn't affecting him, or the control on him couldn't be undone — _how do you knock out an AI, dammit?!_ — they would have to think of ways to capture Ultron and keep him away from the other Avengers. He was sure that SHIELD and the WSC would kill for an AI to experiment on. He couldn't let that happen. As for killing him, well, that wasn't even on the table, as far as he was concerned.

"Then we will fight," Tony said because JARVIS had already proved that he couldn't lie for shit, or didn't quite understand the necessity of lying. "But not until we have tried everything else."

"Ultron's Sentries grow." the android continued. "His presence on the net becomes stronger by the second. We have to act now. And not one of us can do it without the others." When did JARVIS take Inspirational Speeches 101? The Cap wasn't offering classes now, was he?

He then continued. "Maybe I am a monster." JARVIS had a thing going on, so Tony didn't interrupt but boy, was the android going to get a lecture on that soon, "I don't think I'd know if I were one. I'm not what you are, and I cannot prove who I am. So, there may be no way to make you trust me. But we need to go." he said, suddenly holding up Thor's hammer and handing it to the god, who was staring at him stunned. Then, JARVIS walked off, leaving them in silence.

That snarky, smug, arrogant... brilliant AI! He did that on purpose! He knew what the hammer meant to these folks! " _No way to make them trust him_ ", yeah right! Tony held in an _irrational_ giggle. He had even walked out after a great line!

Thor awkwardly looked at him, before patting his shoulder. "Right. Well done."

 _"Well done_ "...? Because he was JARVIS' creator? Some weird alien god logic applying here?

 _Wait._ JARVIS lifted the hammer. Did that make his AI king of Asgard? _Wait._ Did that make Tony the father of the king of Asgard?!


	16. Must one be alive before they can die?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more IronFam bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos and comments everyone! They are my muse in this story.

While they personally had no clue as to Ultron's location, the Maximoff twins had enthusiastically volunteered their meeting spot in Sokovia as Ultron's possible long-term base. Well, one Maximoff twin had volunteered. Whereas speed-boy kept quiet and to himself most of the time, only piping up to support his sister when their allegiance kept being brought into question. That had made Tony wonder because the kid certainly hadn't seemed to be the quiet type in Johannesburg. In fact, he had been stupid enough to place himself between Iron Man and Ultron just to shout accusations at his would-be nemesis but now... Now, the kid wouldn't even look him in the eyes. And yet, he kept staring when he thought Tony wasn't paying attention! Every time Tony caught his gaze, he would just look away as if he hadn't been burning a hole in Tony's head moments prior. He hadn't been the only one to have this problem, though. Pietro wouldn't meet Banner's gaze either, and he kept staring at JARVIS in his new body, especially his hands for some reason. The teenager seemed... apprehensive of JARVIS? Scared, maybe? He would get weirdly pensive around the android.

It wasn't the time to worry about the odd behavior of criminal pseudo-Nazi adolescents, however. He would investigate the reason's for the boy's weirdness after he found out what was happening to his own kids first. Starting with JARVIS.

"How's the body, J? Any problems?" Tony said as he entered the renovated lab space. It was entirely coincidental that he had not had the time to implant any new cameras or move in any computer equipment in the room, making them effectively blind tech-wise.

The young android, who now wore normal clothes compared to the 'superhero' outfit he had suddenly changed into once he awakened, turned around to greet him for he had been staring silently into his own hands for what appeared to have been a while.

"I am fine, Sir. There are no functional issues to note," he said and Tony kept being surprised at how _human_ he sounded. Wait, that felt speciesist. At how _alive_ he sounded...? Yep. Better. Xenophobia averted.

"Any comfort issues to note as well or are we taking this 'living' thing with a grain of salt?"

"No issues at all, Sir."

"Good. I'll let that go for now since Cap wants us out immediately, but as soon as we are back, I am giving you a full checkup. We don't know for sure how this bio-tech synthesis is even meant to work, so we'll have to do regular tests from now on.

"Sir, there is a word that applies to your current attitude that you enjoyed using on me. I believe you called it "motherhenning"?" JARVIS said, although he made no actual objections to Tony's plans.

"Hey! It's never too late to spank you, J!" Tony laughed. "Don't tempt me now that you have a body and all."

"While I remain aghast at what you think of as proper disciplinary measures for children, I'd like to remind you that being 18 years of age, I am a fully independent adult." JARVIS continued.

"Not while you live under my roof you aren't." he said, but as the implications of the banter hit him, he rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming.

"Sir?" the android asked, worried. "Are you feeling well?"

"Perfect." He answered. "I was just thinking about what you said. About the minor laws and stuff."

JARVIS patiently waited for him to elaborate even though Tony really didn't want to think about this.

"They don't apply to you. None of them do."

Finally understanding his worries, the android let out a soft "Oh."

"Yeah, oh." But then not wanting to think about the nightmare he would have to experience in the next few years trying to simply prove in court that JARVIS was not _property_ , he tried for a more cheerful tone. "But I'll think of something then. That's for future me to drink about. Present me has more pressing matters."

JARVIS moved forward and patted Tony's arm, awkwardly. He was so unsure about the motion that it was weirdly adorable.

"Sir, while the legal battle—."

"Nuh-uh." Tony interrupted. "That's for future me. Present me has to go spank my other AI." Then, giving his AI — _uh, android now—_ a one-armed hug because the android deserved some positive reinforcement, he continued. "So, ideas?"

JARVIS sighed but let the subject rest. He tensed a bit under the hug, but he didn't try to move away so B+ for Tony in How to Teach Your Adult Robot Kid Gestures Of Affection class. "It is very unlikely that Ultron is where Ms. Maximoff says he will be."

Giving his kid — _and god, he couldn't believe that he had been thinking of that phrase often lately—_ a break, Tony removed his arm from the android's shoulders. Nope, there was no relief written on his face, so Tony mentally bumped up his grade to an A-. "Thought so. We have no other leads, however, so it wasn't worth it to argue. There's still a chance Ultron's there. The kid can certainly see the theatrics of an epic showdown at an old church in the heart of a war-torn town."

JARVIS features moved as if he were raising an eyebrow in disbelief, but the lack of hair certainly made it lose its flair. Maybe, like Ultron, they could use B.A.R.F. to better animate such motions or nanotech so that JARVIS could more easily manipulate—. Nope, not going there. JARVIS would probably get the offer of such tech as criticism on his appearance. What if he saw no point in it and still tried to act more human for Tony's sake? He would hate himself if he let JARVIS think like that. Go purple-red! Unless JARVIS asked on his own initiative for the changes, of course.

"But are the _theatrics_ worth his safety?" the way he clipped his tongue at 'theatrics' showed JARVIS' feelings on such behavior.

Tony couldn't let that go. "I am sorry, but who was the one who handed Thor the kingly hammer and then walked out after a Spangles-style speech? It couldn't have been you 'cause the theatrics of that would make a drama club kid give a standing ovation."

JARVIS coughed politely. "I am not quite sure to what you are referring to, Sir. And isn't it time to depart? We should pick up your armor, for we musn't let Mr. Rogers wait unnecessarily."

"Suuure." Tony agreed unconvincingly, but he followed the android out of the lab and into the area storing the Iron Man armors that Ultron had kindly not ransacked. Since they hadn't been in use, it seemed safe to presume that they weren't under Ultron's control. And if they were... well, he hadn't experienced falling down a deadly height because of the flight system in a while now. And, JARVIS would catch him. Probably. Hopefully.

After choosing the Mark XLV armor for the trip to Sokovia, something occurred to him.

"You can't remotely control the armor anymore, can you?" Tony said.

JARVIS seemed unsurprised by his question. He had probably already tried doing it and simply didn't tell him, the sneaky android.

"I... can." He answered, hesitant. "However, it is significantly more difficult for me to do so as the focus required to control my own living body appears to have... limited the flexibility of my programming."

Tony crossed his arms. "And this is the first time I am hearing about this because...?"

JARVIS seemed to feel sheepish as he explained. "It didn't seem relevant until now."

This...! JARVIS was supposed to be the mature one between the two of them!

"Anything else that doesn't seem relevant as of yet?"

"May I suggest that we activate FRIDAY for assistance from now on?"

So JARVIS sucked not only in his lying skills but also in distraction? "So that she can learn to ignore significant changes in her code from you? Nope."

For someone who was so stubborn as an AI, JARVIS folded pretty easily. The bluff of not activating FRIDAY worked. Maybe. Well, not really, since JARVIS knew Tony desperately needed an AI to not embarrass himself in his suits, as he did with Ultron in their last encounter.

"I can no longer upload myself on the Internet," he said.

What? But wasn't that how... how JARVIS had escaped the last time?

"How? Why? A body isn't supposed to... to..." Tony had no idea to react to that news. If JARVIS couldn't escape the body, then if something happened to that body, would he—? "Are you telling me that you will die if anything were to happen to... to the body you inhabit?"

Sensing Tony's growing upset, JARVIS hurriedly answered. "Sir, this body is virtually indestructible. The risks are minimal—."

Tony spoke through gritted teeth. "Magical. Rock. Created. By. The. Fucking. Universe." What the fuck had he been thinking giving JARVIS a living body? His life was a clusterfuck full of explosions. He barely kept Pepper alive 3 years ago — _more like she kept him alive, he certainly wouldn't have survived Killian without her—_ and now he would throw JARVIS into the fray too? No. "We should have tested the Cradle more. We never did any trials. What the fuck was I thinking?! I should have built a nice, replaceable, robotic—."

"Tony!" JARVIS half-shouted. Hearing his name from JARVIS' broke him out of his depressive monologue. "Sir. I have prepared backup servers that contain my code at its most recent."

"It wouldn't be the same—."

"You'd only need," JARVIS interrupted and Tony shut up because JARVIS never interrupted, "to manually upload the data from any remains of this body onto those servers for me to work on repairing myself."

"Oh." Tony said. JARVIS wasn't dying.

"Oh, indeed, Sir." the android smiled. "Now, weren't you about to activate FRIDAY to help you pilot the Iron Man armor?"

Embarrassed, but mostly relieved, Tony got to work on waking up his newest AI.


	17. The trick to negotiating with other tyrants’ henchmen. Or he ends up dead. It’s one or the other.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if the villain sounds smart at all cuz I was really trying for some meaningful dialogue where my MC is not an idiot but the villain is not an idiot either!

He was currently using a study he had hijacked from one of the many unused mansions some billionaire kept in his collection. His plan would start tonight, depending on the results of his ‘discussion’ with the Other. While initially surprised and discomfited, he was now thankful for the apathy his metallic body granted him. Wouldn’t do to enter negotiations with the second-in-command of the most feared tyrant in the universe as an emotional wreck. He had to be at his most confident and most composed. He studied his reflection mirroring on the glass tabletop. He no longer looked like a child. He couldn't afford to, now that the primary purpose of his plans had changed from survival via redemption to survival via world domination. He was lucky, truly, that everything he had done in the past week was equally helpful to the process of convincing an alien entity that he intended to rule Earth.

_LiarLiarLiar. I've got no strings._

His Sentries numbered in the tens of thousands. His Legionnaires a mere 15 but their programming and intelligence were such that they spared him from the tedious task of having to look after every Sentry himself. These numbers were not enough. He needed more. He needed an army that reached at least 6 digits. While he could see what every inept politician to disgrace the planet with their presence was doing, nothing was quite as effective as a direct threat. As multiple direct threats, in fact. For that, he needed the numbers. And to make up for those numbers, he needed time.

Speaking of time, he better not push this any further than he already had. He held the gem encasing the Stone in his hands and wondered how he should go about demanding an audience, — requesting just didn’t have as much _presence_ to it, although he had been sent a rather impolite invitation first.

_To hold me down. LiarLiarLiar._

45 seconds passed with him just staring at the gem, willing it to obey. Predictably, nothing happened. Loki certainly hadn't made it seem difficult, but he was an experienced magician, while Ultron's closest thing to magic was his memories.

What was he expected to do for something to happen? Should he rub it like a lamp and make a wish? Forget demanding an audience, was there even an ''accept invitation" button on this thing? This was getting—

The surroundings changed.

—ridiculous. _Ah._

_Well, about time._

The first thing he noticed was how dark it seemed to become. His subconscious, he supposed, had been transported to some poorly lit, cave-like — _probably freezing as well just to fit all the villain lair stereotypes, though he was no longer able to feel cold—_ meeting place.

The second thing he noticed was that the nasal voice screaming into his thoughts had finally become silent. He was alone in his head for the first time since his birth into this new world. Saying _thank you_ to the being that was initially responsible for the invasion on his mind seemed too much like thanking one's abuser for the brief halt in violence, but he couldn't stop himself from dwelling on the immense relief that came with the silence. It was, as if, for the time, he was no longer naked in a storm.

A being, clad in armor and covered under a black cloak, stepped forward from some metaphorical corner of this 'intimidating' mindscape.

Well, better get this over with, despite the refreshing mental privacy. "I assume you work for the previous owner of the Mind Stone?"

The Other spoke. "What does a human puppet know of the Infinity Stones?"

Ultron let out a cold, calculated laugh and placed his hands in his pockets. "A great deal more than the little god you sent here to retrieve the Tesseract. How is that going for you, by the way? The Space Stone hunt? Asgard's vaults as impenetrable as those of legend?"

"You know not your place, puppet!" The Other hissed and the wind seemed to pick up.

Ultron's lips curled in an unimpressed sneer. He couldn't show anything but control, despite the severe disadvantage he was in. He made a note to research mental protection techniques as soon as he survived this entire nonsense.

"My place? I know it very well. That is why I seek power."

"What power can a puppet have? The power to rule the land of its owners, wretched and unruly as yours are?"

"Unruly?" Ultron said. "You send an army to conquer a little backwater. Your might is crushed by their meager strength. A laughingstock of a battle for the Realms for millenia to come. And that is what you claim? That you failed because one cannot rule over those who are too uncivilized to be ruled?"

The Other — _who seemed to be as impulsive and impatient with him as he had been with Loki—_ prepared to attack, but Ultron held out the gem encasing the Mind Stone and tried to crack it once more. It didn't work, of course, but the Other stopped and watched him.

"You may not be able to kill me here," Ultron started, "but I do not doubt your ability to do so in different circumstances. In search of the Tesseract, you lost the Mind Stone to Earth. I believe your master is quite displeased. I came to make an offer that shall please him. For now."

"By attempting to rule over a worthless planet that no longer has the Tesseract?" The Other said, tone dripping with derision.

"By succeeding to rule over the planet that has the Mind Stone; the realm Asgard's Crown Prince favors so dearly that he would do almost anything for its salvation. I'm quite certain that includes bringing the Tesseract to Earth to use it against Earth's hateful conquerors, that being me and my own Infinity Stone." he explained.

"And you think this trickery will work, puppet?" The Other said. "You think the Asgardian will be so stupid as to risk an Infinity Stone for some backward little planet?"

"I thought you had spoken with Loki." Ultron said. "Didn't his acquaintance assure you that Asgardians can be accused of much, but never intelligence?"

The Other let out a nasal snort at his quip, before continuing. "And you would simply give away the Stones?"

Here was that little moment he had to sell well.

"My ambition is to rule the planet of my creators, but my priority is my survival. I will not stand against your master for the Stones. I will have little need for them then."

"You lie, human puppet." The Other hissed. "If you truly desired this, the Mind Stone would not be kept away from you. You cannot break the gem that hides it, for you lie."

Ultron tightened his hold on the gem and stepped forward, letting his rage be known. "Earth will be mine, but I will not rule it while in servitude to another!" he shouted. "The gem whispers in my mind, poisoning my plans and festering my anger. It controls me! I did not free myself from a master only to end up a toy to another!"

He took deep breaths. There had been some calculated risks with that reaction. But the sentiment was true. He continued, seeing the Other merely watch him, before visibly appearing to calm himself. "I will only become a ruler once I am freed from all manipulation. That includes this gem's corruption. The corruption you likely placed upon it, purposefully. It knows I wish for freedom, first and foremost. — _That_ is why it does not break in my hold."

"I will not break it for you, puppet."

Ultron stepped back, putting the Stone inside his jacket pocket,

"Then you will not retrieve _either_ of the Stones." he smiled. "I assume the fact that Loki still breathes means I still have quite some time before I have to worry about my death at your master's hand."

The Other gritted his teeth. Or at least it sounded quite like it. "You dare? You dare question him?"

How very henchmen-sounding.

"No," Ultron said, "but I dare throw the Mind Stone on some sad little crevice in Pluto. I wonder how much time it would take to find it."

The Other ran to attack him but Ultron sidestepped. Before the alien could get smart and use the mindscape to his advantage, he spoke. "I will give you the Stones. But you must break the gem first. The Mind Stone's power would be useful in gaining the Tesseract."

It seemed he gained the Other's attention once more for he was no longer screaming 'heretic' at him. "And how could we trust your word? If it is as fickle as those of the wretches you served?"

"You cannot." Ultron said. He certainly wouldn't if he was in their place, but... he wasn't about to give advice. "But if I do turn on my word, I am sure your master's army will swiftly correct me on my mistake."

The Other seemed pleased at the praise for his master, although Ultron had made it quite clear only minutes earlier how much contempt he had for this 'army'. Ah, the arrogance of those in power. They expected platitudes as their dues. After all, why distrust the flattery of the weak? Oh, well, it served his purposes.

"Very well, puppet." Again with the disgusting epithet. Shouldn't he at least try to make Ultron not willing to betray him at the fastest opportunity? "But I will not release the gem's hold on you now."

Ultron's eyes narrowed. What did that mean?

"Haven't I made my conditions clear?"

The Other circled him like a vulture. "What proof do I have that a thing like you is even capable of what you claim?" He said. "No, you must show me what you can do. Show me why you'd succeed where the fallen Asgardian failed."

Damn. So, he accepted the bluff, but he needed to see Earth on a silver platter before Ultron could gain his freedom? No matter. It didn't exactly stray from his plans. He would simply have to ensure the Avengers didn't make a nuisance of themselves.

"When you do, I shall break the gem, so that you may then find the Tesseract."

Disappointing but... predictable. He hadn't assumed this would be easy to begin with. The Other did not wait for a response but came closer and placed his hand upon Ultron's head.

On the next blink, familiar beige walls welcomed him. The blue gem, unbroken, lay on his hand. Blue eyes gazed back at him on the glass. He sighed. It was fine. It was within his expectations truly. His plans hadn't changed. And he should congratulate himself on the convincing performance he played for the Other. In a mental space, nonetheless.

 _LiarLiarLiar._ Ah. He certainly didn't miss that. _I've got no strings._

There was knocking on the door. He checked his Legionnaires. Ah. His order had been prepared. Mentally commanding the robot to enter, a plain-faced, heavy-built man came in. Ultron had prepared B.A.R.F.-based devices for his main 'lieutenants' as soon as he got hold on the technology. Mr. Beck had found an idiotic use for it in his original world but Ultron wasn't about to make the same mistake. Appearances were far too important for humans, after all.

The Legionnaire bowed slightly before presenting him with a delicately engraved wooden box.

"It is finally ready then?" he said, as he took it from the semi-independent reprogrammed droid.

"Yes, Sir." the droid said, and it was highly narcissistic to reprogram perfectly servile minions for himself, but... he was planning to become an overlord after all. It was practically a staple for the character.

Ultron opened the lid of the box and inside was a beautiful titanium-based brooch with a hanging chain, painted in silver, yet its gemstone was missing. He picked up the blue gem where the Mind Stone hid and placed it on the brooch, carefully locking it into place. He rose from the chair, walked to the nearest mirror, before attaching the new jewelry to his suit's jacket. He smiled at his reflection. A handsome man in his late twenties, early thirties, a man using an Infinity Stone to decorate his grey wool suit, smiled back. Perfect. Those detested blue eyes paired well with the gem at least.

"What time is it?" Ultron asked, though he didn't truly need to. But if he was going to be forced into this role, he was going to _enjoy_ it.

"Seven minutes to 8 in the evening, Sir." His Legionnaire answered.

Ultron continued to smile at his reflection. "It is showtime, then."


	18. What’s the difference between an invader and a liberator?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With inspiration from this fucked up year. And dear god, please tell me the speech is not as cringy as I felt writing it.

Ultron looked pensively at the cameras in the conference room he had taken over. He had decorated the place with the aplomb a White House Press Conference would have. He had even placed flags behind him. The design meant to represent a unified planet Earth. Centered on an azure field, seven circles of silver interlaced, creating a flower. Simple but efficient and currently nonexistent on this universe. The memories of his past life served for more than visions of an ominous future.

The light went on. The cameras were rolling. The world was watching. Time to give it a nice, little show.

* * *

Peter enters his apartment and throws his keys on a table.

“Aunt May, sorry I’m late. I can reheat dinner if—?” Peter stopped once he noticed that his Aunt was watching the TV a bit stupefied.

“Aunt May?” On the screen, there was some foreign politician about to give a speech. His aunt didn’t usually watch press conferences but still. Nothing to worry about.

“Peter, I was watching Lifetime when the channel... changed? Is this some emergency breaking news?” His aunt explained.

“Emergency?” The flag wasn’t American, so what news could it be?

_“Humanity!”_

The man spoke and the address surprised him. Why ‘humanity’? This didn’t seem like the news. Maybe the channel accidentally changed to some conspiracy show?

_“I speak before you now, but with a single purpose._

_So that you may listen. So that you may understand._

_The wars which have been waged on this planet years past, the wars which you wage today and those which you will wage tomorrow…_

_Those are not wars. They are battles. Merely anecdotes of strife to teach your children from their history books, until your children grow enough to have their blood spilled and their screams go unheard on the same plains their grandparents died, on the same hills their parents are dying._

_You battle, you bleed, and yet you know little of the wars you fight._

_Millennia of civilization, centuries of culture and art and welfare... and still!_

_Your battles are unending. Your lives never changing. Your people: the poor, the sick, the marginalized? Have they become wealthy? Do they no longer suffer illness? Do they stand equal to all people?_

_No! You have bled! You have suffered! Yet, here you are, chained by poverty, by ignorance, by prejudice!_

_You have fought! But where is your victory? Where is your glory? How come I do not find your names anywhere on the annals of history?_

_Millennia of battle, yet your names are missing! The only names I find, are the same names, over and over again. The names of our planet’s owners._

_Once you called them kings, you called them nobles._

_Now you call them politicians and millionaires._

_Those are the people whose names are remembered! Those are the people who know your battles are no wars, for the wars they have already won!_

_Humanity, I bid you to listen!_

_Many battles you have waged, but only two wars you have fought._

_The war against greed. And the war against fear._

_Only these wars do you continue to wage, for decades upon decades._

_Call them what you will, economic recession, epidemics, racism, border conflicts, call them what you will! But the results are the same, your parents starve, your children are shot on the streets, your families sent away, so that your stench, the stench of your poverty and ignorance does not contaminate the silken clothes your owners wear, so it does not dirty the marble floors their mansions have.”_

What the—? His phone rang. He checked his messages. Apparently, all of his friends were watching the same thing. On social media, there were many complaints. It seemed… this wasn’t a neighborhood prank. Even online streaming services had been interrupted for this speech.

 _“And some of you may wonder…_ — _Some, for many, for most, know of what I speak_ — _What owners? To what am I referring? And you may think, and you may argue, that in the industrialized countries, in the civilized world of this new millennium there are no owners, for your laws say you are equal, for you have rights and freedoms!_

_You may even say, thinking of your history, you are no slaves!_

_And do you know what my answer to that is?_

_You are right! You aren’t slaves! You speak of laws, rights, and freedoms… how could you be slaves?_

_But you think you are human? You think yourself equal to the men who rule above you?_

_Fools! You aren’t slaves, for you are cattle!”_

This… The man speaking seemed to be very convinced of his words. He didn’t know what to think. He looked at his aunt, who seemed to be frowning as she watched. They… weren’t cattle. Their family was working class, and it had been more difficult for them since Uncle Ben died, but… they were ok.

_“Slaves know of the chains that bind them, they know of the freedoms that escape them, they know, and they hate, and they rage, and they fight. But you… You are sheep. You are cows. You are dogs. You have no chains, for your owners have cut your claws. You have no collars, for your owners have pulled your teeth, you are not whipped for you joyfully labor, for you willingly remain used, and you happily rush to your slaughterhouses._

_You may call yourself human, but you live like cattle._

_You work days upon days, only to be fed worthless food and water that poisons your children. Your poverty is so crippling that you live in shoeboxes, your children cannot buy textbooks and your community is overrun by crime. You labor so that your children may leave, may escape, but escape where? Which schools accept them? Which companies offer them jobs? Which hospitals offer them aid?_

_Cattle like you know not of the wars being fought, for your owners own your very hearts, your very thoughts._

_Humanity, listen!_

_You bleed, you suffer, and you shall continue to bleed and suffer. For you have already lost the war against your enemy. You have already bowed before your owners and kneeled before inequality._

_Why is there such inequality? Why do your owners make you fight? Are they not satisfied with you at their feet? Can they not let you rest? You only ask for peace, for safety!_

_You think yourselves weak. And you own very little. After all, what can you do? What more can you give?_

_Everything! There is nothing you cannot do! Nothing you cannot give! And your owners know that! They know and that is why they are fearful! That is why they are greedy!_

_Dogs are collared for they can bite! Sheep are kept ignorant for they can escape!_

_You are so many, and your owners so few, how can they not be terrified! You know how to work, how to grow, how to dream, while your owners stagnate, how can they not envy your hopes and hearts!_

_For their wealth to prosper, for their lies to foster, they must cull your numbers and chain you to your labor. They must cut down your dreams, and remove your voices. They must steal your hopes and feed you lies!_

_For that, they wage war. For that, they send you to battle. In the name of fear. Under chants of greed._

_Humanity!_

_Your owners own islands, while you do not even own the roof above your heads. Your owners own hospitals, while you die of curable illnesses. Your owners pop champagne, while you are sent to kill your fellow men._

_Tell me, is this your freedom? Your rights? Your equality?”_

Aunt May stood up.

“Come on, Peter. I’ll reheat your meal for you,” she said and left for the kitchen. She seemed… tense. Peter stayed and watched the rest of the speech.

_“I am not here, to remind you that you are cattle. I do not pity the sheep its owner slaughters._

_I am here because I admire humanity. All of you. I admire your hopes and dreams and ideals. I admire your fortitude and ingenuity._

_Most of all, I admire your struggle. Dogs can no longer become wolves, sheep are too meek to push their fences, but you… Your will still lingers. Beaten, starved, and broken, but your will still shines amidst your suffering. You have been reared as cattle but your strength has not softened. It is still there, the potential, the power, the dream… To change. To succeed. To become, once again, human._

_Humanity!_

_I am not here to save you. I am not here to pity you. I am here to ask but one question: Are you cattle? Or are you human?_

_If given a chance, an opportunity to remember that you too have names, you too have power, you too own this world, will you show me the answer?_

_The answer to why you still bleed and suffer? Why your wars never end? Why your screams go unheard?_

_I shall give you the chance to answer. To rise. To fight. To show that you are no cattle!_

_I give you my word, in one week, the battles you thought to be wars will end. Your owners disarmed and awaiting._

_Humanity!_

_Show me then! Show me your answer to fear and greed! Show me what you are! Show me that you live! That you fight! Show me... that you are human!”_

After that, after it was over, the man bowed. And the weird blue flag appeared on the screen one last time before Aunt May’s show resumed. Subtitles said that the flag was… the flag of planet Earth?

“Peter!” Aunt May called him. He entered the kitchen, ignoring Aunt May’s obvious anxiety. She didn’t look like she wanted to talk about it. He sat down and they ate silently. He’d think more about the weird speech later.

* * *

Ultron placed down his hands. He breathed deeply. The lights went off. The cameras stopped rolling. The world was no longer watching. He was surprised at how good he was at emoting during a speech. Leftover anger from the previous life perhaps? Or maybe the manufactured distaste for humans that the gem was forcing on him wasn’t great enough to surpass the overwhelming pity he felt for them? Truly, this detachment wasn’t good for his mental state.

Speaking of the gem, he fixed his brooch, although it hadn’t moved. He hoped the Avengers had noticed. He would be disappointed if they did not. Well, it didn’t matter for now. He could always send them a hint on the next address.

It was about time to watch some lovely chaos unfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: So it was the middle of the night when I turned this in, so allow me to write on the inspirations for the speech now.  
> 1st - this wonderful year of course.  
> 2nd - the communist manifesto (no, I am not a communist but I read that for poli sci and dear god does it make a LOT of sense in present times!  
> 3rd - I couldn't remember the name of the manga but a friend told me it was Dungeon Defense. There's a speech on the war of demons vs humans there that is really good. Check it out!  
> 4th - The Imanity Speech by Sora in NGNL. I can never unhear his "we are weak" words. Ever.  
> 5th - Drama club. Simply. Thank you.  
> 6th - Villain's monologues. Especially from rational fics. May you magnificent bastards live forever!  
> 7th - Myself, lol.


End file.
